hello fabien,

i'm a judge for the city-scene contest. i think the
discussion you and kix are having is important. here
is my interpretation on the rules and my judging
criteria. this may be useful to anyone considering
entering the competition.

as kix said, the true spirit of the contest is to
push the limits both in modeling and texturing/
rendering in carrara. however, he is correct that
amapi was included version 1.1 of carrara released by
eovia. to me this is good enough to be considered the
same technology.

in general, it is less important to me which software
you model objects in, than it is you model the
objects yourself. while the contest permits the use
of borrowed models, i think it comes down to a matter
of integrity. if you use models others have created,
you avoid 1/3 of the process and really miss out on
the thrill of creating your own scene. however, this
is a matter of personal feeling. i will not base
judgments on this.

one of the reasons i suggested a cityscape was that
it allowed for people of all levels of modeling skill
to make a competitive entry from a modeling perspective.
one can create a spline-modeled building or a vertex-
modeled building and they will look fairly similar. so
modeling skill shouldn't be the basis of a win or loss.

to sum up a long-winded posting, the criteria that i
will base my decision on are: (in order of importance)

lighting
texturing
modeling
composition
color scheme
depth of field
interpretation of theme

i hope this has been helpful to all potential entrants.
if there are further questions pertaining to my criteria,
please feel free to ask.

regards,
-scott