3dcheapskate posted at 6:17 PM Sun, 12 January 2025 - #4492798

As Wolfenshire and Peter_Pixy_Harrison borh clearly pointed out, the contests and challenges should encourage, not discourage, people from entering.

So how about challenges that actively encourage and help people to improve their skills ? For example you could have a challenge focussed on lighting and shadows. The main challenge thread could link to appropriate Poser and DAZ Studio lighting tutorials,  but it should also invite people to share their favourite approaches to dealing with light and shadow. 

Of course, this would then rely on people actively sharing their knowledge in the thread - but then thay's what this idea of community is all about, isn't it ?

This on the other hand is an excellent idea, though there are downside to technical challenges.

The first (in particular with lighting contests) is setting an even playing field so to speak, some sites will simply give users a scene and all they have to do is light it, but of course this has a few potential problems, the scene firstly has to work with multiple users software and rendering engines, so off hand for example it would have to work with Iray for Daz, Cycles for Blender and is the new version of Poser cycles too? plus whatever other engines are used on site. Secondly you need a scene that people would want to light and of course the final downside is that for many a lighting test can be quite monotonous/tedious, personally I love lighting tests and I conduct them all the time for my scenes but many do not have the time that I do.

But do bear in mind that the basic premise of every image is to be making use of and exploiting lights and shadows.

Another that I quite like the idea of are the contests run by Kitbash, you are given one of their kits for entry (worth roughly $200) and just have to make a scene or animation using it, whether that means making an entire city or just using a single prop or piece from the kit is down to the entrant and of course you get said kit for free. Which I guess the problem with that is giving away a something to be used in a scene as a prize irrespective of whether a user places or not and by the same mechanism, whether a user even enters and image or not. Kitbash do these competitions in the long run to sell subscriptions to the cargo downloader, though how many subscribers the really gain could govern the feasibility of an equivalent on here. 

I would imagine uptake could be a stumbling point too as at first this may be low and if a competition doesn't really draw a crowd would it be run again? probably not but that said if something was run, even if that was through forums before deciding if it was worth elevation to main page status then it might bring a few onboard, though slowly. However of course it would rely on both word of mouth as such and of course a moderator or moderators to regulate it, so another potential stumbling block but a potentially good option if it could draw a crowd and potentially new users/artists to the site. But as Wolf stated, this depends upon the regulations allowed for the contests too.

The problem generally with contests is that you have staples throughout the year, Easter, Christmas and/or Thanksgiving, Halloween, the Pin-Up thing etc, all of which take time (six weeks at rough guesstimate?) so this limits free space to run alternative contests and entering contests one after the other can be tedious too as well as time consuming but that is not to say this doesn't make them worth running for a longer term gain.

Lights/Textures/Camera's in that order, cycled and worked on continually to develop and evolve, irrespective of whatever software you use.

P.S would love to see a historic contest run, would also be unusual to see one run somewhere.

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