I am always impressed with the high quality of images here at renderosity, and I am always stunned by how many pictures come out each and every day. Getting into the Top 20 is more of a challenge than we give it credit for. The amount of images posted allows for a very small percentage of those images to make it to the top 20 in the first place. The current 'Top 20' is absolutely astounding!! The best I have seen since I started coming here. With this standard of work our chances of nabbing a spot become less probable :) My hat off to all the contributers that are in the top 20 as of today! Check it out if you havn't already!!... Kutter

I agree, great images, although I do think that it helps if you're a popular guy...

Totally agree to the above. The quality and amount of images posted ever day is overwhelming. IMO a lot of talented people from the Bryce community switched to Vue since Corel announced that they'll quit further development of Bryce. ;) No need to say that there are a lot of talented Vue artists around. @ Gaussian: I don't think that you "have" to be popular/famous to make it into the Top 20 though it might be an advantage. Me myself doesn't car if the name under the image is a person I know. What's in a name? It's the image that counts. Happy Vueing, Phil

Kutter, thanks for pointing out the Hot 20, some of the best of this week! Last time I visited there was when you posted a msg in this forum stating that you made #1 there. :-) PS. Quiet contrary I do somewhat agree with Gaussian...

Yeah, its an interesting point about the 'being a known' persona here on Renderosity to make the Top 20; and to a point I agree... However, lets look at 'why' the people who always make it (sorry guys gonna pick on you a bit :P) make it regularly to the hot 20. First of course is there talent! I mean, regulars to the top 20 are Sacada, Erka, Thomas Krahn, Margit1, DJeser, Pmermino, Madasatadpole, ZXVB, RDS(shoop), to name but a few. Take a look at thier galleries, and you will soon see why they are this popular. Its got nothing to do with the name - its all in how good they are at what they do! 2ndly, is thier presence here on Renderosity. What I mean here is their dedication to helping out and pushing new talent. I for instance dont have time to comment on all pics here, but a lot of the above named comment on 70 - 80% of the pics posted. Credit where its due people! These folks put in the time, and rightfully they reek the benefit! 3rdly is the fact that the same people on Renderosity vote all the time, and they find the 'worthy' pictures often by the name thats under it... This I think is wrong, but its impossible to change, as thumbnails don't show a pic for what it is, and as WingedOne pointed out it shouldn't be about the name, but about the picture! I think it would be really nice for everyone that posts here to become regularly involved in voting for images. I'd like nothing more than to see a number one with 100+ votes, it would make it a much more enlightening experience to get there :) Not only that it would make it more of a regular feature for all of us, with more challenge to get there.. Please don't get me wrong, Renderosity is NOT about competing with each other, but a little friendly rivalry keeps us all on our toes, and pushes us to greater things. :) But short of making voting compulsory, this will probably not happen. I think as a community Renderosity does have its little cliques (sp?) of people, which is a shame. But thats human nature and not something that can be changed. But for those reading this (if you made it this far, you must have some interest in Renderosity and what we have been talking about-lol) do your best to get more involved... Give credit where its due, even if you 'don't' recognise the name (we all started somewhere right?) and lets try and make Renderosity a little fairer! (well our own Vue gallery at least :)) Wow, this turned into a rant i didn't expect LOL.. but for those that know me, this long post will have come as no suprise. Kutter.

Hi, Kutter, how are you these days? Interesting topic; I've brought it up before. I am always astonished when I see the wonderful images posted in this gallery. I think we do have a much higher percentage of excellent stuff here in the Vue gallery than most other galleries. I, for one, am not a vote-shark. I am more interested in comments and feedback on my images. We have had instances in the recent past where an individual created many clones of himself to take over the Top 20. That pretty much soured me on the whole vote idea, although I do vote for images that I think are really outstanding. But I find the comments, encouragement, and help I get through the comments (and IMs) are the best thing, and make me feel like folks are really looking at my images and giving me feedback. I've had some very serious, critical feedback given to me, usually in IMs, so it is between the other person and me, which is cool. I take it seriously. But Kutter has an important point to make that I'd like to echo. It's one thing to pop in here and drop a bunch of images and leave. And read any comments you get, feel good or bad about that, and that's it. But it's another to spend a bit of time looking at others' images and offering a comment, or an IM on it. There are a lot of folks who's images I will ALWAYS comment on because they offer the same courtesy and encouragement to others (and not just me), folks like rds, Kutter, sacada, Winged One, wabe, etc. They are not only what I consider excellent artists, but decent caring people who make the time to give as much or more than they get. There are other folks (some of whom have been in the Vue gallery for a while) who seldom or never bother to make a comment on anyone's image. Some of these people do great images, that's not the point, the point, as Kutter said, is the "community". Some of the newer folks in the galleries seem to maybe be too shy to comment on others' images or don't seem to understand the tit-for-tat of commenting; another problem is that I am on dialup and when new people post 500k images, I'm not gonna open it. I have IMd several and mentioned they might want to consider resizing image resolution since not everyone has DSL. Anyhow, I have gotten so many nice IMs from people who said, "thanks, I really appreciate that you took time to comment on my image" or "thanks for the IM regarding my image". So you know that commenting can mean a lot to people. Kutter, your rant is contageous, lol!!

Djeser, you beat me to it. I was writting something like this as well. :-) I belong all the way bottom of the food chain; I go to school, maintain a full time job and also freelance for a company. Yet everyday I budget atleast 20 minutes for this gallery and go through every picture that is posted on that day. If I like 'em I comment and if I like it very much I rank then on extreme case I vote. Only because I post here too and some of the artists do spend few moments to leave comments on my images. That's all I care about. :-) I couldn't agree more with you guys, it is a community and everyone should act like it. About the vote & ranking, I don't know man; I have seen so many pictures (may be including mine :-)....) get excellent rating, which does raise questions. :-) PS. By the way, Kutter, I'm patiently waiting for those textures from your vacation. :-)

As has already been said, the people who put the most amount of effort into the community seem to get the most amount of recognition, (Well deserved I might add). The Vue top 20 is always full of great imagery, but not only that, the images are refreshed very quickly. If you have a quick look in the Cinema hot 20 you'll see stuff from January and April, everything in the Vue hot 20 is from October. One thing I am in awe of is the amount of time that some people expend in viewing and commenting on pictures, and to all of those people; you have my admiration, I just wish I could too.

PS. Kutter, Your rant is dangerously contageous! :-)

Regarding Sentinel's remark about the difference in the C4D hot twenty and Vues, you only have to look at the greater amount of input into the Vue gallery and of course the Poser gallery to realise why there are more people voting in the latter galleries. I use Vue, but to be fair on the C4D users there is a lot more work in most cases to turn out an image in their app. Most C4D artists create all the content of their images, whereas most Vue and Poser artists use mostly off the peg stuff, inevitably there is likely to be many more people in the Vue/Poser camp and a greater turn over of images. I try to comment on as many images as possible in the Vue Gallery, but like Djeser being on dial up, its slow and to be honest sometimes Im lucky if I can get through looking at 4 images in thirty minutes. If they are large file sizes, (over 400KB), I sometimes just give up waiting for the image to come up if I am short of time, I generally try to keep my own images down below 300KB. I have been very busy of late and if I have missed two or three days on the gallery, there generally is so many to try and catch up on, I often later realise I missed something quite outstanding. I would like to see more new comers take part and share in commenting, some come on and throw on a fair number of images, open for comments and rankings, but do none themselves, do they presume there is a paid group of commenters. I started commenting on images sometime before I ever posted, I felt that if I expected people to take the time to look at my images I should take some part first. I agree that names can get votes, but it isn't neccesarily people who take much of an active part in the gallery. Sometimes a name that gets massive votes, I have only seen comment on others work maybe once or twice in this last year I have been involved. Dave