Hi Everyone

This year's Halloween contest is now active!

The theme for this year is Ghouls, Ghosts, and Goblins - We look forward to seeing your creations and hope you have fun creating them

Here are the links to the Halloween contest pages.

Link to the 2D contest page:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/?ViewContest=1456

Link to the 3D contest page:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/?ViewContest=1457

Link to the Animation contest page:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/?ViewContest=1458

Link to the Photography contest page:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/?ViewContest=1459

Link to the Writer’s contest page:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/?ViewContest=1465

This will run from now until October 17th

Voting will be from October 17th-24th

Winners will be announced on the 31st

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

I think there is a problem with the Animation Contest rules:

"Image size must be a maximum of 1200 pixels x 1200 pixels in .jpeg or .gif format (72 dpi)."

This sounds like a still image contest?

I have fixed this.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I think there is still a problem with the animation contest, unless I'm missing something. Now it reads:

"Image size must be a maximum of 1920x1080 pixels in .jpeg or .gif format.[72 dpi]"

It should list video formats, running time, etc.

This is what has always been on the animation contests as I went all the way back to 2010.

It has to be a gif as this is what our system is set up for and we are not concerned with running time as long as it falls within the file size limits.

Steve, for animation, you put a small still image in 1 for your thumbnail. For 2 put a large still image, a frame from your animation. This is where the 1920 x 1080 image goes. 3 is where you put your animation. Are you asking what formats are allowed in 3 for the animation?

RedPhantom posted at 8:25PM Tue, 13 September 2016 - #4283288

Steve, for animation, you put a small still image in 1 for your thumbnail. For 2 put a large still image, a frame from your animation. This is where the 1920 x 1080 image goes. 3 is where you put your animation. Are you asking what formats are allowed in 3 for the animation?

Right. I was expecting something like "acceptable formats: wmv, avi, mov", maybe a max running time (I don't see a reference to the 50MB maximum size in the Animation Contest rules), and maybe a frame size, e.g. 720x480 (SD). I have no problem with the two still images (although just to mention it, the screen shot above says 1200px max height and width, rather than the current rule showing 1920x1080). But it seems like a little more info on the video file is needed, before I get to the upload screen you show.

Hi Steve K. -

Sorry it took a little while. I do agree it would be helpful to have the excepted files listed on the description so I have updated the page to reflect that and made the correction to the image size as well

I really hope this helps clear things up for you and other and wish you a wonderful rest of the week

Looks good. I see you also added the 50MB max file size, an important parameter. If I recall, the videos are downloaded by the voters, rather than streamed. I'm planning to use wmv (on the list in the rules and pretty good, IMHO) for a 1-2 minute animation, and adjust the quality/compression to get it under 50MB. A quick Google search makes it look like wmv movies can be easily imported to Quicktime via various free convertors/players for the Mac. Does that sound reasonable to the Mac users here?

http://www.aimersoft.com/convert-wmv/play-wmv-on-mac-free.html

I'm a bit late to this party, but I noticed something in the rules for the Animation category.

Since published contest rules are a legally-binding contract, everybody needs to be really careful about what is stated, and the actual words used. That is why this particular error is so problematic. The third bullet point in the 'Entry Specifications' contains a serious error:

"•Max file size is 50MB and the excepted files are: doc,pdf,rtf,txt,jpg,gif,png,ppt,fla,mov,m4a,avi,wmv,swf,tif,mp3,divx,mpg,mpeg,mp4,3gp,docx,md" (Emphasis added) What this rule actually says, is that any entry submitted, that is in any of the formats listed, will NOT be 'accepted' (which is undoubtedly the word that was intended); in other words, any file, in any of the formats listed, are to be excluded ('excepted') from consideration. A fine, but critical, distinction.

I have updated the rules to accepted.

Firstly, thank you for the Halloween contest. It's a lot of fun.

Secondly, in the writer’s category of the Halloween Contest, I see you have copied and pasted the stories from the submitted files into the description fields. That is fine. However, in some entries the copy and pasting was done in such a haphazard way that the formatting was ruined – line spacing, punctuation, were all clumped into a big mess. My point is, you would not take someone’s image that was painted or rendered, paste it onto the website, and think it was okay to distort its color, or stretch and pull its aspect ratio. So why is it okay for the written story?

I understand this is just an amateur contest for fun and it should not be taken seriously. However, I believe writing is an art form too, and the way a story is formatted, the way it is presented, has meaning and intent. It should not be treated so callously.

Again, not trying to be pedantic or a jerk. It is just the way I see it. After all, Renderosity is a business to promote and assist people to create their own form of artistic expressions, and artists absolutely despise having their creations messed with by others.

Thank you.

StickFigures posted at 2:44PM Mon, 10 October 2016 - #4286287

Firstly, thank you for the Halloween contest. It's a lot of fun.

Secondly, in the writer’s category of the Halloween Contest, I see you have copied and pasted the stories from the submitted files into the description fields. That is fine. However, in some entries the copy and pasting was done in such a haphazard way that the formatting was ruined – line spacing, punctuation, were all clumped into a big mess. My point is, you would not take someone’s image that was painted or rendered, paste it onto the website, and think it was okay to distort its color, or stretch and pull its aspect ratio. So why is it okay for the written story?

I understand this is just an amateur contest for fun and it should not be taken seriously. However, I believe writing is an art form too, and the way a story is formatted, the way it is presented, has meaning and intent. It should not be treated so callously.

Again, not trying to be pedantic or a jerk. It is just the way I see it. After all, Renderosity is a business to promote and assist people to create their own form of artistic expressions, and artists absolutely despise having their creations messed with by others.

Thank you.

I take FULL blame for this. For some reason copying the stories from Adobe to description field messed them up. Trying to get this rectified ASAP. I feel horrid...

Jamie, thank you so much. Please don't feel bad. It's really a small matter. I just wanted to express my opinion. It is a fun contest.

Slight concern about my entry in the Writing Contest: Both the "Image" and the "Thumbnail" fields echo back the name of the file I uploaded, i.e. *.jpg. But the "File" fileld does not show the name of the text file, it just stays empty next to the "Browse..." button. I tried several times, same thing. Pleas let me know if I messed up somehow.

Okay, I had the same experience with my animation entry, i.e. the "File" field did not echo the name of the video animation file I uploaded. But this time it took about ten minutes to upload the large video file, so I'm pretty sure it worked okay. Lemme know if there's a problem.

Steve, I just checked and I don't see your entry in the Writers Contest but it is entered into Animation and it looks great!

chelseawilliams posted at 10:37AM Fri, 14 October 2016 - #4286704

Steve, I just checked and I don't see your entry in the Writers Contest but it is entered into Animation and it looks great!

I got an email saying my entry to the Animation contest was approved, but no email for the Writing Contest. When I submitted the Writing entry, I got the immediate reply that the entry was saved successfully. I just now tried to re-submit to the writing contest (I think its past the deadline?), and I get a response "Sorry, you've already submitted an entry to the contest." The rules say its OK to submit to more than one part of the contest, so that should not be the problem (just FYI, I submitted to the Writing Contest before the Animation contest). Sounds like my entry got lost somehow, any suggestions? I sent you an email (Chelsea Williams @ Renderosity) with the text file and the 300x350 JPG (used for both the thumbnail and the image files), hoping I can still be entered.

Thanks.

Hello,

We extended the deadline until tomorrow morning. However, we see your entry for the Writers contest in pending now. We are in our annual company meeting today so we will look into this further in a little while. I did receive your email as well.

Thank you so much and I apologize for any inconvenience or frustration. I hope you have a good day!

Chelsea

Okay, thanks for the prompt response. I'll never win the Nobel Prize for Literature if I don't participate in these contests ...

Edited by JennBlake to remove the names of those artists so that it does not cause an issue for the artists who entered the contest. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

We, as entrants aren't allowed to make it known which entry is ours, so why do you guys get to show bias on your facebook page?

So, no response to this, either here or on the facebook page?

I removed the post. My apologies, I thought everyone could see the entrants.

RPublishing posted at 4:29PM Mon, 24 October 2016 - #4287725

I removed the post. My apologies, I thought everyone could see the entrants.

Bit late now really as the post has been up for a few days now; perhaps if JenX's post had been addressed sooner - and as admin you really should be kept informed of rules and regulations regarding competitions etc.

tparo,

I am usually on and would have seen her post however I was in the hospital last week so I missed it.

All Staff does know the entries are supposed to be anonymous and this admin must have forgotten.

I do apologize this has happen and can assure you it will NOT happen again.

Warmest Regards,

My notifications for this post must have not been coming through. As contest mod I apologize that I did not see this problem earlier...

Entry #3 Animation section looks just like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIDGTZbQ3Jw is this a copyright infringement ? or are they the owning artists or is it plagiarism ?

jif3d posted at 6:00PM Thu, 27 October 2016 - #4288092

Entry #3 Animation section looks just like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIDGTZbQ3Jw is this a copyright infringement ? or are they the owning artists or is it plagiarism ?

Thank you for bringing this to my awareness I have brought this to my admin for review.

Can any future hunches of copyright/plagiarism infringements be reported in an appropriate manner please. Contact a member of staff via sitemail and outline you position and references/links that raised your suspicion. If the staff agrees with your opinion we will pass it on to copyright department. If you know it is for a a fact ie. it is your work that is being used then contact the copyright department direct with the details. Copyright is taken seriously here at Rendo and anything put forward will be thoroughly investigated, however the person on the pointy end should at least be given the benefit of the doubt and not publicly called to account as that is putting the cart before the horse.

The product used in this situation raised has similar licensing to all your Daz and Poser products, except it moves. Same rules - Buy it, use it for your projects.............Don't sell it or give it to anyone else.

Thank you

O.K., my bad, in future I shall do as suggested.

jif3d posted at 11:31AM Sat, 29 October 2016 - #4288130

O.K., my bad, in future I shall do as suggested.

It's our bad not yours my friend. We set the stage and you merely pointed out a flaw that needs addressing for future events such as these. My words of wisdom above might be the proper and discreet way for issues to be handled, however if we don't give the members the correct tools........................TBC

My favorite quote(Excuse) for the past two weeks has been "It is easy to overlook something, if you are not looking"

So... its 11:15 AM eastern...on Halloween.