This is what i posted as my first (and most likely last) message at cgtalk. Since i am a newbie there a administrator has decide if my message is worthy of the forum, i guess not. "I always learned that a good carpenter never blames his tools. But by the looks of it some people here blame the tools of others. Perhaps the forumname should be "Creative Computer Graphics Forum as long as you use the tools that we approve of". And since this is my first post here, and probably my last i am also going to post this over there at the renderosity Bryce forum."

It will probably "vanish" some "mysterious" way. In fact, you can almost count on that. One of the biggest problems with CGtalk, and this is really pissing of the regulars over there as well, is that every critique pointed towards CGtalk, CGnetworks or Ballistic Publishing is deleted, no matter if its justified or not. Luckily not everyone over there act like five year olds, but most of them are in fact pretty open minded people. Naturally there are exceptions...

Thats why it is posted here, just to be sure that i am not talking to some guy with a slab of concrete in front of his head. Or as we say in Dutch "Een plaat voor je harses hebben". With that we mean "A person that is not willing to listen and goes his own way".

cgtalk, meet drac. drac, meet cgtalk. =) Drac

LOL...(I watched that mild taunting Drac);)

Very much in agreement with you Rochr, the vast majority of the folks in the Cinema4D forum over there are quite cool. (A good few of them hang out in the C4D forum here as well).

What? No link to the thread that's gonna go Poof?

Attached Link: http://www.cgtalk.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=1665118

Okee, here is the link. And I guess that they are indeed afraid of us Bryce users ^___^, just look at one the reaction on my posting: I just don't understand what part of the rules and lengthy discussion here by Leo that you don't understand. No one is saying Bryce isn't a tool that can be used for modelling or creating an image worthy of a gallery. The problem is that this is a "challenge". And it has been determined by the Admins and Mods of this site that using a tool such as Bryce to quicken the modelling process is an unfair advantage over those who are willing to spend the time and energy to create the model from scratch. There are freeware apps that are capable of spectacular results given the right "carpenter" has the vision and desire to create. You can either pout until you're blue in the face about what you're capable of with Bryce or you can shut up and get to work on your entry. End result is that if you use a 'click-n-create' shortcut ... you're going to have to face the jury of your own peers. They (not the Admins or Mods) will have the final say in weather your Bryce solution stands up to the rest of the challenger's hard work and persistance to learn. They are afraid, very afraid. And they know that there are people who use bryce can run rings around the peeps with much more expensive applications.

This all seems so silly and pointless. It's like saying if one app has splines and nurbs and subdivision then the users of that app can't use them, because other programs don't have them. OK, it's cheating if people use readymade Bryce skies, textures and terrains, clickety clickety click. But that kind of thing is immediately obvious. No serious entrant would be doing that.

Another thing - how would they know? What's the difference between making a terrain in Bryce, and making one in Maya or Rhino? Is a terrain generated in a Maya or Rhino plugin or complementary program allowed? What about people who use specialist tree-creation programs like Onyx?

I suspect there is a different agenda, one that would be better served by having 'juried' entry.

The bottom line always is the results achieved. Using other people's models is a fair exclusion, but not the other oul' guff about Bryce. Edit to add - oh, OK, I had a look at the thread and see that they're not allowing any randomly generated terrain, so that's kind of acceptable IMHO.

Message edited on: 10/23/2004 01:45

You mean there's a problem with taking unfair advantage over some self-important elitist. I've always had a soft place in my heart for unfair advantage.

Perhaps it really would be better to let it be now. Youre pissing of those guys to the level of banning yourselves, and ALL Bryce/Vue images over there, and i mean the galleries too. That wouldnt help anyone. Why not make our own "Space Opera" challenge here instead? :)

Agree with that, there is no place like home ^____^

But i have entered the challenge, and my messages are ok now and show up on the forum, even the message that i posted at the start of this thread. I made a rather long reply and they will have to do with that, that's my opinion.

It will take some time, but i guess it can work out, and with this many competitors it would be hard to finish even near the top, but i don't mind, its the process behind it that appeals to me.

Actually this could work here as well, have a challenge over a longer period with a lot of feedback and participation between the competitors, it sure is better than having just a lot of friends (croonies) wich say "Nice render", vote and hey presto a entry in the Hot 20.

Only the current forumsoftware is not so well suited for such a challenge-idea. But i like the idea behind the challenge overthere, if only some people......

Message edited on: 10/23/2004 04:48

OK, deleted my rant now that I've had time to cool down. Still not interested in the forums there, they just don't seem to be much fun.

I guess they are afraid indeed, look at the response given:

It won't be very fair for people who want to use their own original freeky model. because if we remove this criteria a poser/bryce/photoshop entry may win (as you'll agree). and he could have finished his image in 2 days while other's spend months in modeling and rigging.

I feel so good now ....... Bryce-users are superior, instead of months of tweaking at models and rigging they have lots time left to come up very original ideas and concepts, and finish their final work in the last two days of the contest.

We can sweep em, Blitzkrieg tactics, whoohooo.....

Message edited on: 10/23/2004 05:58

Can't help but this is rediculous! Are we all sharing a wonderful hobby or are we going to wage a war? Mayaers against Rhinos against Brycers against the rest of the world - it's quite boring! Why wasting precious time to persuade some short-sighted guys that every programm has its strengths and weaknesses - and that doing a good pic only depends on the skills you can handle your tools. And if some people in their most elitist Maya-, Rhino- or whatsoever-heaven think that Bryce is only a second class programm and such easy to handle, that every newbie can come up with a complex self-modeled starship in less than 2 hours, leave them in their erroneous belief. We know it better!

Well maybe not two hours ^__^, two days is not impossible. But i have laid this conflict to rest for the moment, and started participating in the challenge, maybe some will see then that Bryce is more than just pushing a few buttons, what's between the ears still counts. If only my scanner (probably its a failing PSU) did'nt break down, ah well i use the one at my work then.

Can't find the "Generate Original Space Image" button on my copy of Bryce5. :^D We gripe (well, I do) about how hard it is to model and get decent renders in Bryce, and these guys think all we have to do is push a button. :^D They should try using Bryce so they'll be able to say something intelligent about what it can or can't do. I would never say how easy it is to use Maya or Lightwave, for example, because I can't afford them, so I've never used them, and therefore have no knowledge base from which to judge them. But I do have to assume there's something about them that's worth thousands of dollars. And people using everything that Maya or Lightwave have to offer would feel handicapped if one of us did the same with Bryce? How can Bryce be a cheap low-end program and have capabilities that the high-end users fear would put them at a disadvantage at the same time?? Sheesh. I made my latest image in 3 days, but it took me 16+ cumulative hours to build the model and render. Maybe I'm a bit slow, LOL, but all I can make in a couple of hours is a reflective sphere over water. :^) John