"Loki" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> Why does the comeptition only rarely see entries of truly high (i.e.
> highend3d.com) quality?  It's because the competition doesn't *want*
> entries like that, because they'd just win hands down month after month and
> it would be no fun for the people who don't have access to a full
> Maya/Renderman rig.  But in its present form there is nothing stopping
> industry professionals entering the IRTC with their work.  Perhaps the IRTC
> should be rebranded to clarify that it is not in fact a raytracing
> competition on the whole, but a POV specific contest.  The way some people
> seem to think of it is that it isn't really even a competition.  It doesn't
> have any prize associated with it, and it doesn't, I'm afraid to say, carry
> any prestige these days.  Perhaps the Internet POV Ray Gallery (IPRG) would
> be a more appropriate name?

The IRTC is a learning tool, in competition form.  And its a good one
because it permits beginners to enter, and doesn't penalize them just
because they're beginners.  Its good that its not only POV, because despite
what some seem to think, getting good results out of ANY 3D software has a
learning curve, and everyone is a beginner sometime.

My entries are usually competing as much with my previous entries as with
the other entries in the round. I'm not a professional CG artist, and I
can't afford $6000+ in software to have all the bells and whistles in one
package, but I would like to be able now and then to produce something like
they do that creates a mood or recreates a scene to a degree that someone
will look at it more than once.

When I look at all of my past entries I see progress. When I started
entering (using Bryce at first, found PovRay after I found IRTC) I had lots
of free time, and I'd spend most of the two months working on it to get
something that was just ok. Now I don't have that much time, and if I can
get a couple weeks in I'm doing good, yet I think I've gotten some pretty
good entries, so I'm happy with that.

The guys who have the money to spend on Maya / 3DMax probably have (a)
already gone through much of that learning stage before they spent the
money, and (b) are setting their sights on generating some return on that
investment. So the IRTC is not going to offer them much.

All that said, I think that in several of the recent rounds there has been a
definite flow of slapped together Bryce/Rhino entries that tends to dilute
the overall level of the round. This has been attributed to a CG class at a
school all submitting. Some of the students seem to get more involved and
actually try to come up with something serious, but for others its clearly
"just another assignment".  I do think that somewhat abuses the "beginners
welcome".  Perhaps the instructor could have his own competition, and only
the top finishers submit to IRTC.

RG

P.S. I thought Derrick's entry was definitely a good one, but I didn't enter
that round, so didn't get to vote :-(  Only critique I had was that the
moon looked too sharp, like it was only 10 ft away, but given the topic, I
wasn't sure that wasn't intentional...

P.P.S. Another one I thought was quite good, and was disappointed at its
finish was Incongruous (Helene Dumur).

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