Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1046552

Thomaskrahn had the successful idea of a story.
Others had the idea to create something useful for Vue (sample: our atmosphere challenge from last November).
Some others again liked the idea of an image to reproduce.

What do you all think, if we leave it up to the winner of the monthly challenge, to choose one of the above ideas? Or should we only keep one of these ideas for the whole year?

Here again, your short feedback is important.
For the moment, we only have one participant for the very difficult January challenge.
Maybe some others have not finished their images yet? You have until January 30 to submit:-)

Please give your opinion.

:-)Guitta

I don't know, but I was thinking that we could let each winner choose which kind of challenge to do for the next month.

So there could be four different kinds of challenges to choose from:

1. theme + technical
2. image reproduction
3. story-based
4. create something useful

It's a dynamic approach, because each month could offer a totally different challenge.

Charles

Charles, when you say: "create something useful", did you mean a vob object (i.e.from primitives?). Guitta

Guiita, I was quoting you from your first post (i.e. atmospheres, primitives, etc.). Charles

i think that a mixture of all would be great. Something like: Guitta decides the major direction (something useful, from a story, free, image repro etc) and the winner defines the details (which theme, what is useful etc). What i mean is, that it is not necessary (from my pov) to define a direction for a longer period. Fun is the major issue of the whole thing. So let's have fun and do different things. Walther

I think that the winner should decide. After all, Guitta has a lot of other things she works on! I also think we could add in a "theme" type of idea, like we had last year, to vary the choices. Like we had forest, etc. So that would give us: 1. From an image 2. theme 3. useful (like atmospheres) 4. From a text description/story

I think that if Shadowwind won the last conest, that he should choose also. I would like to see everyone enter a small bit of story or peotry, and then everyone use their own perception to create an image to accompany the text. The variations would be asstounding and I think that everyone, regardles of talent, would be able to contribute a work of themselves. Sound crazy?

Mixture of all should be great . Reproduce a photo seems very interesting but also terribly difficult, and result never satisfaying. Useful things are useful for you but not for me (but it's not so important). Creating from a story is nice, we maybe could be satisified by the result, and we could interprete the theme. It's important to change every month (as in the past) since everyone could have a chance to find something fitting his taste. ;=) Yves

My 2 cents. I was the one that suggested something usefull because I looked at the mojoworld model and realized that's one of the reasons that program is so cool. They have a weeekly challenge. Somebody makes a planet and everyone exlores it rendering up to 3 pictures of what they find on the planet. Well after a year you got 52 more worlds to explore. That model works and I would like to see somthing similar done in vue to give added value to the program. Usefull could be any part of the program. Textures, skies, plants, anything even meshes. Then when the month is over we could collect these extras and stick em in free stuff for all to download. Everyone wins. Now having said that there is no reason why the winner should not continue to pick but maybe pick for a list of possible topics like above. If we go the parts way I think it will generate a lot of interest because of the added value it adds to the program. The only draw back is going to be finding space to host the parts. Maybe we could talk to renderosity to give us some extra space just for the challenge? Like I can't stick more free stuff on my site cause it's full. My space here is also full. There is no reason why it has to be strict and could vary month to month picked by the winner. Story this month and a mesh or texture next month.

I can exceptionally host free stuff at Rendersity for people who have no own space, but there are limits. Each forum has 50 MB for such things. Presently, we have about 20 MB free. But there must also be hosted the challenges, also it cannot be full. That's why I delete the past challenge images after 2 month, otherwise there will not be more space soon. :-)Guitta

aken_aton, I think it would be very crowded if we let choose the monthly theme by more then 1 person. That's why I think it is better to let the winner of the month choose as we did until now:-) Guitta

Free space will be the problem to solve. Now Mogoworld people use personal servers and even the company donates space to host the challenge worlds. I don't know if personal servers are the way to go. Free stuff can quickly overwelm a off the beaten path server. But nothing says the files have to be huge. There could be limits placed on the files say if it was a mech challenge that the mesh cannot be over so big in size. We should almost ask if we can con a bit more space from Renderosity for such a project. It benefits everyone. Like this is a huge deal really if you think about it. One of the reasons why people continue to buy Bryce is the vast amount of free stuff available for it. We should try to close that gap maybe not in quantity but quality. This would be a great way to generate more stuff and it could mushroom into a really big deal real fast. One of the reasons I came here in the first place was the free stuff. There is one more thing there is no reason why the stuff has to remain on the server forever. Like my latest meshes got tons of hits but now it's dropping off. There will be soon not much reason keeping them there taking up 90% of my space so I may remove them and replace them with different free stuff. If it known there only there only there for a limited time people will grab them right away. Nothing stopping people from trading them after there removed from the server if somebody missed the download.Like keep it there only for a few months say 2 and ya snooze ya loose, find somebody who will send it to you. It's a solution to a really big roblem but it would be nice also to have tons of them listed forever too. Then new members benefit also. The problem here is we need something like the game planets have. Unlimited space unlimited bandwith for related material. Sombody should really seriously look at the game planet model and convert it to graphics. maybe we could stick them on what's that place called? Turbo squid. I think you can if it's free. I think you just have to talk em into suporting vue files. I don't think there is any there yet. I did it here, I was the first to put Vue files in the store cause there so huge. I had to convince them that vue file support was worth it. Now look at all the files available for Vue in the store.

If you don't want to end up with boredom, you should at least change the type of contest each month. Not everyone is good at copying images, others ,especially those new to vue, aren't that good at creating usefull stuff. You could easily end up with a challenge for the few very good vuers, if you understand what I mean. And new vuers are left out in the dark. I am working on a picture, but the school eats up the days ;)

This is something you should directly write to the administrators MP:-).

Alecssander, that's why we will have a list to choose from (see the beginning of the thread:-) Guitta

Wabe, I just make the rules because I have to manage the contest:-) Guitta

Sorry Alekssander for the misspelling.

You wrote: "Or should we only keep one of these ideas for the whole year?" And that is a bad idea. Isn't it far between c and k ? ...lol..

Alekssander, on the keyboard, my left hand doesn't know always what the right hand is doing (LOL)

Ya I agree nothing saying that it has to be written in stone. Variety is the spice of life. Just some sort of direction, a guide or path to follow.

Gebe, maybe i was missundestood. I try to say it more clearly. One person (probably you) define the direction (copy an image, illustrating a story, doing useful free stuff, etc) and the winner of the last contest fills this with details (what is useful, which story, which image, etc). Again, fun is the centre of these contests (for me). There was a good point from Alekssander. We should do things that are not only for a handful of gurus.

I agree Walther and Alekssander and the others:-)

I thin that MightyPete has a GREAT idea. What if we were to let the winner decide on a terain and an object. Then the contest could be something along the lines of: All work submitted must include the terrain (location is artist's choice) and the object...both of which can be decided upon by the last month's winner. That way we can sort of fall in que with the mojoworld idea. Same objects, different usages and perspaectives. Extra additions to the scene can, of course, be designed/used by the artist. Everyone follows a theme, yet put their own personality in to it..regardless of talent (or a lack thereof in my case LOL)

OOPS! almost forgot the space issue. I am QUITE sure that there are people on renderosity, like myself, that have TONS of space left. We can utilize our space for the terrains/objects. Something about for the good of all mankind comes to mind....LOL.

That would be the best is people to use there free space if they have some here to host the files. Seems like some people have problems with there free space here though. Mines full I could delete stuff and make room The only thing is size has to be of paramount concern. We don't want to have the extra being a whole scene decorated buy different users we just want te stuff that was used to make it saved as objects or textures. Stuff is pretty easy to make in vue really and for people who don't know how to do things like exchange leaves for instance it's a plan that may inspirte them learn if not the first time then maybe the second time. I think it will get more people to join in the fun not drive people away actually. That is the effect that the challange worlds have had on Mojoworld. Like how hard is it to make a texture say glass or metal. Like some things are dead simple. Meshes could be difficult for some but not really if you use the primitives that come with vue and even my free primitives here that are available. That's the thing you're trying to win and have fun and learn all at the same time. This idea fits that model. Me personally would say making a texture and rendering it in a scene is a hell of a lot easier that trying to render a photo or make a entire scene from a story. Like we could attemt every aspect of cgi even UV mapping. It's a greeat way to learn for a lot of people. Learn by doing hands on stuff. And even of you don't enter you benifit from the free stuff made available at the end. You can pick it appart and learn.

Variety is the spice of life. I second what sittingblue suggested; let the winer choose from the four types of challenges mentioned. jon

My only thought on this is that there may be other challenges that fall outside the four suggested. Should they be excluded simply because we didn't think of them now? This problem can easily be avoided by allowing the person selecting the challenge to have a bit more of a free hand in their selection. If the type of contest must be classified into one of a number of choices simply add an "Other" category. It may never get used but at least we wont be making problems for ourselves later if someone with a good idea comes along that wont fit into the other 3 or 4 suggested categories. Mark

You're right Mark, I think we will give as a guideline the ideas mentionned above, but if a winner has another idea, he may submit it freely. The funny thing, in the past years was, that some winners did really not know what they could suggest for the challenge and had to ask for an idea. Yhis is especially true for beginners. Guitta

Sorry for not being so active so I only found this thread now. I think we should give my idea (the text) a chance and see if it worked. That would also be a kind of theme. I've experiemented with writing such a text and I think the last few ones enden up really good, giving lots of opportunities to create various and diverse image from the same text. Please tell me if you wanna have a look and see what a "challenge"-text could be like. I think it could be awesome. Then if it works really good, we can try it again or somehting and if not something else. - Thomas

You can post your text here Thomas. So it can be helpful for the winner of our January challenge, if he (she) wants to choose a text for the February challenge:-) Guitta

Okay.. here it is : - Standing in the bottom of a small valley. A little stream is floating just under me. In the stream huge rocks are creating small waterfalls which disturbes the stillness... Each side of the vallery is totally covered with trees.. I can't even see the sun because of them. A thick, humid haze is everywhere... I can't see more than a few hundred metersbecause of it. Dang, it's hot! - I don't know if there are to many details or something but that pretty easely recreated and can be done in thousands of ways. What do you think? Thomas

Nce story Thomas. Maybe it gives an idea to our future winner. If not, he (she) has other possibilities to choose from:-) Guitta

Forgive my late posting into this, but I have been kinda out of it last few days. I think the multiple type challenge is a good idea to break it up, but I think maybe it should alternate rather than be chosen or be chosen by Gebe and then let the artist that won choose what kind of theming or details. This way it will keep the challenges varied. Just a thought. I think in a separate concept, perhaps we could work on creating new things for Vue in the future so that we can close that gap with the Bryce folks... My 2c ShadowWind

Great Idea Shadow! Maybe if we work on some kind of collective project or something that would accomplish his idea.