Good way to get more interest: post to povray.news-submissions.

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Chambers wrote:
> OK, after one week, I've had a submission from one person.

I was actually wishing to participate.  But I only really have time for 
elaborate povraying during weekends.  And unfortunately, I lost my CPU 
time for the whole weekend in a stupid render... :P

> 1b) How much more time would you realistically ask for?

how about 2 weekends?

> 2b) What subjects would interest you?

Office items is cool enough.  I'm more of an interior spaces guy than a 
naturalist or landscape one...

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> OK, after one week, I've had a submission from one person.
>
> Unfortunately, I was hoping for more than this :(

I would expect the subject restriction is artificially limiting your potential
pool of objects. Looking through p.b.i there's a lot of diversity evident in
what people choose to work on, so maybe choosing one particular subject
(whatever it happens to be) would result in low submissions.

If you want to provide focus, maybe have some sort of target number of objects
to be submitted, or something?

Or if you want to stick with the restricted subject, I noticed that some of the
large collaboration images seem to do well, at least for a while. Providing an
ongoing render of an office produced with submitted objects might work. You
could start out with placeholder boxes everywhere and replace them with real
objects as submissions trickled in. An attractive enough render output (a bit
of radiosity, bit of blur and bouncy specular) and it might work to encourage.
Use the end result as the category facing image for office supplies, or
whatever.

Tom

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Chambers wrote:
> OK, after one week, I've had a submission from one person.
> 
> Unfortunately, I was hoping for more than this :(
> 
> So, I have a couple of questions:
> 
> 1) Who would participate if given more time?
> 1b) How much more time would you realistically ask for?
> 
> and,
> 
> 2) Who would participate with a different subject?
> 2b) What subjects would interest you?
> 
I am working on something but it takes awhile in POV, especially when 
trying to answer to the constraints of
a) coming up with something even worth doing, ie something more than a 
model someone could knock off on their own in a few hours
b) coming up with some sensible 'parametizing' of the model
c) coming up with a bullet-proof implementation that answers to the 
necessary standards set out, but also to the scrutiny of the community here.

So in short, as it stands, the idea I had had is not worth releasing at 
this point.  There are both current bugs in the implemetation I have as 
well as overarching questions about the worth of the models even if I 
did get the bugs out.

I think the subject is just fine, in fact more than just fine, I really 
enjoyed researching the category for ideas.  My own inclination was 
toward more antique office accessories and I was facinated to find sites 
catering to collectors of such things.

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> OK, after one week, I've had a submission from one person.
>
> Unfortunately, I was hoping for more than this :(
>
> So, I have a couple of questions:
>
> 1) Who would participate if given more time?
> 1b) How much more time would you realistically ask for?
>
> and,
>
> 2) Who would participate with a different subject?
> 2b) What subjects would interest you?
>
> --
> ...Ben Chambers
> www.pacificwebguy.com


First of all, thanks for taking the time to answer my question by email. When I
asked it, I really thought that I was going to get a submission in.  It turns
out that MOST of my weekend was spent as a driver-organizer-expediter for a
friend's father's funeral that I thought I would just be visiting briefly.

How much more time?  As near and dear as the members of the POV-Ray community
are to me, I'm afraid that many are nearly as bad as myself when it comes to
working under deadlines. The phrase "open-ended" comes to mind.

As for subject matter... To be honest, MOST other subjects would be more
interesting than "office supplies".  (I wasn't going to say anything since
contributing seemed a far nobler act than griping.) Perhaps it would work
better to make a list of categories available.

Finally, even though you said that you didn't want to clutter up the binaries
folder with submission code, I'm guessing that it WOULD be a good idea to post
example images as they come in because quite a bit of activity is generated
around here as people respond to one another's images with variations and the
like.  I think your project is a good one.  I hope that you won't be
discouraged by the challenges of working with a busy volunteer community.

Best Regards,

Mike C.

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Chambers wrote:
> OK, after one week, I've had a submission from one person.
> 
> Unfortunately, I was hoping for more than this :(
> 
> So, I have a couple of questions:
> 
> 1) Who would participate if given more time?
> 1b) How much more time would you realistically ask for?
> 
> and,
> 
> 2) Who would participate with a different subject?
> 2b) What subjects would interest you?
> 

My plans for this week got derailed by looming deadlines in real life.
Not knowing till last week that I had to finish a paper this week really
killed my free time. When I finish this desk and typewriter models, they
will go up.

How much time? I'm slow. It all depends on if I find the magic
combination that makes an object work. 2 weekends would be better then one.

Topics, hmm. I tend to model things that really won't have a good use
outside. Chainmail macros to generate textures via the orthographic
camera, or fantasy knives for fun and profit. Musical instruments might
be an interesting topic, as would something silly like 'Model your
telephone'.

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> OK, after one week, I've had a submission from one person.
>
> Unfortunately, I was hoping for more than this :(
>
> So, I have a couple of questions:
>
> 1) Who would participate if given more time?
> 1b) How much more time would you realistically ask for?
>
> and,
>
> 2) Who would participate with a different subject?
> 2b) What subjects would interest you?

I'd participate, I didn't see this until after it was over.  My POV time up
until yesterday was used by SCC5 anyhow, but that's done now.

Not sure about time.   Perhaps you should have a couple subjects and package
when you get a certain number of submissions?

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