With the year drawing to an end, was wondering if there was anything scheduled for this year? ;-) Any latest news on the Bryce Guru's contest?

I haven't heard anything else, but I'm sure something's underway somewhere. I've cleared a space on my mantlepiece for the giant gold trophy, so bring it on... ;)

After this is over I'm going to write a book called "Wooing giant sponsers and getting free magazine ads"... Put your readin' glasses on folks... Catagories: It's impossible to have a large group of genre or theme based catagories. With the desire for large prizes goes the ability to have catagories for say, Sci-Fi, Midevil, Fantsy, etc, etc, on and on. The catagories must be taken down to a workable number. This is what exsists so far; 100% Pure Bryce - no imports - no post work allowed General Bryce - imports allowed - postwork allowed Abstract - Imports allowed - postwork allowed ---------------------------- Landscape? - This should be a 100% pure Bryce catagory, but with Bryce 5 owners having a HUGE advantage with the tree lab... Modeling? - I would personally like to see this one. Prizes: If I can get even more multiple copies of prizes, I would be open to more catagories, of course. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners in each of the catagories. Prizes for each specific placement in each catagory will be the same. Meaning the grand prize for one catagory will be the grand prize in all catagories, all will all 2nd places, 3rd, etc, etc. Each Grand prize winner in each catagory will recieve 2 large prizes along with 3-5 smaller prizes. 2nd place winners will most likely receive 3-4 prizes. 3rd place winners will recieve 2 or 3 prizes. Want to make it so that the smaller prizes that the 2nd and 3rd place winners recieve won't just be the same, smaller prizes of the 1st place winner. Prizes will be Bryce and/or 3D related. Also, new "Freestuff" items that are available exclusively only to members who take part in the contest. Another incentive, and sort of a "prize" for all that enter. One entry per member. Can't have someone winning in multiple catagories. That would be unfair to others and unfair to the multiple winner if we made he/she relenquish one of the wins in one of the catagories. Entering: With the number of entries (hope, hope) voting will most likely have to be done initially by the members of Renderosity to bring it down to a certain number of finalists. Finalists will be voted on by recognized names/faces in the Art/3D world. Specific method of voting is still being digested from the examples given by humorix and everyone else. ISP's will be logged to prevent multiple entries or self voting. Members will have to provide scene and or post work files. ANY version of Bryce (including demo's) can be used for any catagory. If contest is a hit, we'll most likely host it twice a year. Contest - Prior and Post will be in the Renderosity Magazine. I'm working on having announcements in other magazines. There will be advertising on other websites. (thanks to you all for giving me links and etc.) My biggest pet peeve about contests...is the time alloted for working on your entry. Meaning that I myself would like a fair amount of time to work on something that was to be my best work. (No, I can't eneter, I was just making a point) That being said...members should have at the very least, two months to work on their entry from the point of contest announcement. Actually, I would prefer three. What's your thoughts on that? Without bringing out my big book of notes, that's what is going on as of now. *Sponsors want to know that there is going to be the largest amount of entry's possible, with as much exposure as possible of their product. If a magazine or website is to offer ad space, they want to know the same things. Members want a prestigious contest with cool A$$ prizes. The trick has been getting them all together, almost all at once, lol. I would like to be able to announce the start of this contest sometime in December, January latest. AgentSmith

Three months would be very nice, but two months is also quite acceptable. What's the official stand on that? Does anybody (sponsors etc.) think that two or three months is too much? Or they would welcome a prolonged exposure?

Sponsors - doesn't matter, but yes, as much exposure as long as possible.

Two months is acceptable, three may drag it out a bit. Sounds good so far.

The exposure would be repetitive if it was like the Rosity Cards contest. No one would ever lose site of sponsers. The only draw back of a shorter time frame is that Admins (AgentSmith etc,) would not have much down time in between contests. With a longer contest, now I'm playing devils advocate here, but would people lose interest and the numbers drop off?

If the prizes are good, and if the contest is held twice a year, I don't think many would lose interest. It's not a weekly contest like the cards.

Thats true, three months would work.

Well, just think about it, twice a year means once every 6 months. That's six months to work on your entries between contests. Grand prizes could be worth $1000-$1500+, so...I would hope that would keep interest up. ;o) AgentSmith

"...voting will most likely have to be done initially by the members of Renderosity to bring it down to a certain number of finalists." Uh oh... A few points on this: If it has to be this way, then OK. Personally, I'm well against this happening, but if it does I'd very much like to see the following rules: 1) Entrants cannot vote (for obvious reasons) 2) All entries are anonymous to the voters 3) Individual votes are not made available during voting Also - and this is more of a logistical thing - how would this type of voting be accomplished? Say there were 300 entries that needed to be narrowed down to, say, 100. And maybe 400 people vote. In order to get 100 from 300, they'd have to place dozens of votes each. After all, 400 people with 3 votes each could easily vote for only 20 images, especially if only a few stand out. Then what? 380 people don't even get a look in. Conversly, give each person numerous votes (assuming they'll bother, see below) and you'll get so many ties you might as well send the whole lot up. Also, how many people have the bandwidth / time / motivation to look at hundreds of images, especially in a competetion that they have no stake in? Let's face it, the answer is nobody. For the judges it's different in that (a) they ARE the judges and they have a job to do, and (b) the images can be presented to them on CD or something - they hopefully won't have to endure 2-day loading marathons to get them up! :<> I know it's not me who's doing the work here, so it's nothing to do with me, but I'd advise steering well clear of prejudging - as well as the logistical issues, it will create a sh#t load of bad feeling from the people who worked 6 months then didn't get the chance to be judged by the pros. IMO, concentrate on making it easier for the judges to work through the entries rather than giving them less to judge. "Members will have to provide scene and or post work files." Not full scenes, though :o - please tell me I won't have to endure a 20hr upload of my .br5 file!!! ;)

I totally agree with Tuttle about voting rules - especially the anonymity of entries whilst voting is taking place, and all votes to be hidden until the winners are announced. I also think that two months is a reasonable amount of time to keep a contest open - any longer and it loses its 'thrill' (it doesn't take a lot to thrill me!. It must be possible to allow participants to vote, whilst not allowing them to vote for their own image, though - isn't it?

Darkginger - the reason I'm against competitors voting for other competitors is that when there's big prizes at stake there will be a lot of "crafty" voting. I must be honest and say that if competitors are allowed to vote on pre-judging then I'll be voting craftily too, bearing in mind there might be a big big prize up for grabs. Just to give you an example of what I mean: I submit an entry. I check out the others and they're really good. I'm not even sure that mine will get past pre-judging. So what do I do? - Vote for the best image thus increasing my competition and jeopardising my chances of getting through pre-judging? No way! I vote for the worst one there! And with potentially hundreds of people doing exactly the same thing, the images that get through pre-judging are unlikely to be the ones we REALLY think are best. It must be the way my mind works, that I think of things like this ;)))) but if I entered then this would be a way serious thing for me, not just the fun of a monthly challenge! goes off to look for pennies down the back of the sofa...

I think 2 months is sufficient time to come up with a great image. I'm concerned about the voting also. The only place I've every seen entrants able to vote on images was the Ray Tracing competition. Every place else has had a panel of judges who are allowed x number of votes. I don't have a solution but it needs to be thought through. Cie

I didn't give particulars about how voting would go on, just because it isn't completely decided on, and my fingers were complaining. All the info I gave above is just basics. BUT, a big yes to tuttle, that is exactly some of the apects of how voting will take place (your 1,2,3). I am very serious about making the voting process as productive and fair as possible! It is my mission. In fact I am not a fan of members voting at all, lol. I would truly rather the recognized artists look and vote on them ALL. Yes, I would be willing to take the entries, burn them all to disk and mail them to all the judges, I don't care how many I would have to burn/mail. But, I have to make a voting strategy in case I cannot get that. Which is probably the case, since what professional, busy artist has the time to look individually at a few hundred pics and rate each one? Hope for the best, plan for the worst. If we have to have Renderosity members vote: Members who enter cannot vote. They will either vote for themselves, or the smarter ones (tuttle) will try to stack the deck. I was going to explain that, but didn't want to give anyone ideas... AgentSmith

"...I was going to explain that, but didn't want to give anyone ideas..." Oops... 8|

Lol, ah well. Doesn't change the fact I wanted to avoid Participants voting anyway.

That's okay. Cause I don't know any contest where participants vote, anyway. But how are you gonna prevent cloning and dial-ups? For instance, I'm on a dial-up and have a different IP address every time I connect to the Net. No way to prevent me without also preventing everybody from my ISP's IP space. cloning is self-evident, I think. :-)

Renderosity has had a lot of (ongoing) practice blocking banned members from coming back. And, I don't know the specifics of their ISP/IP tracking, but I have seen where Renderosity techs can hunt down nearly anybody, no matter what they're using. It's kinda scarey, lol. No contest is perfect, but you have to aim for it, to at least get close. And, that's what we're gonna do here. :o) AgentSmith

Firstly kudos to AS for having taken the idea so much forward. Here are a couple of suggestions Ive put up for consideration: -- Voting: Im still quite against the idea of voting towards pre-selection. For any contest for contests sake, voting might be taken into suggestion, but for a Gurus contest, any effort to try and whittle the entries down to a manageable number will always be fraught with uncertainties. Who votes? Trolls? Only people with galleries? Exclude participating artists? Exclude visitors and connoisseurs who arent artists themselves? Do an IP address check? What if there were more then one user of a particular IP (for eg. Freeze who are a husband wife team, but each may have a different preference. So does one vote get validated?) What about ISPs which allocate IP addresses on the fly (A large number of ISP in various countries allocate an IP address on the fly each time you log in! I know cos mine does and also having been a channel manager in a portal, I know the nightmare we had in trying to gauge traffic flow through our sites, based on IP address). Also more the controls and measures are brought it, the greater headache its going to translate into for AS and/or Renderosity. Its one thing to conceptualise a voting system which is fool proof and another to program it, bug test it, and then make the system gripe free! Id strongly recommendkeep things simple and let the judges decide. In most such contests (say for the American Illustrator Showcase, Communication Annual, Canon GDCC etc) the judges themselves do a cursory sorting at first, deciding on which images to look into in greater details and then after the preliminary judging they start going through the selected ones in greater detail. With a suitable jury selected, this will prove to be the least controversial methodology, I feel. -- Categories: By far a large majority of Brycians/Brycers use Poser as a complementary S/W. How about a category for the best Bryce Poser marriage (ummm Im already drooling on imagining kromekats creations coming in here)? Other then a few mule-heads like me who try and model people with meatballs, most use Poser extensively! It will open up a whole slew of new sponsors/prizes and bring in a lot of poser talent too! What say AS? Would it be a large number of entries to merit a separate category by itself, though I cant see myself participating? And would we need a separate category on modelling, what with a 100% Bryce category already being there? If its 100% Bryce, expertise in modelling would also have to be shown, and again, as its a Gurus contest, all round expertise in materials, composition and lighting will have to be shown. A.S. you have stated that 100%Bryce have no post work. But we had already faced this issue in the first 100% Bryce challenge we had. What about people with slower machines who might want to render their image in parts and then composite them as otherwise it would take eons to render? Or getting a depth of field by blurring using the depth render and selecting in Photoshop? Or, for the matter, simple Color correction? And 100% Bryce would stop people from using the HDRI technique to use as a material in their image as background might have to be composited separately even if its modelled completely in Bryce? What if it was stipulated that post was allowed but NO OBJECT BE ADDED IN POST OR BY MEANS OF PICT OBJECT towards the composition? After all it can never be 100% Bryce, what with terrain which can be created in a 2D program or textures which are created outside and brought in. Also Bryces task is to render, but not to color correct. -- Number of entries: In every other competition, which has categories, entries are restricted to one per category. Not one per whole contest. Moreover a Bryce Guru should be validated by an all round usage of Bryce, not a particular category. Wont there be a Best of the Show recognition like the Chelsey awards and Photoshop Gurus contest? However one might limit the number of categories one participates in to say 3. Theres also a difference between citation/trophies and Prizes. While Im all for maximum number of people getting a maximum number of prizes, lets not stem merit. A rider can always be provided that any entrant will be entailed to winning a maximum of one prize irrespective of the citations won. This should provide incentives enough to all who participates and the prizes would get distributed amongst the most without restricting merit! Well thats all from me for the moment. Will put up more in case I think something new up! :-) Avi

Yes, I agree that "no post" would prejudice against people with slow machines. I don't say that from a personal perspective ;) as my machine is anything but slow, but even so I made a decision recently to render all my stuff in default AA and do the rest in postwork. That way, instead of 4 hrs eating double-choc cookies, I spend 4 hrs doing post, gaining experience and, hopefully, getting a more pleasing result. Unfortunately, allowing post throws up another problem and I have no suggestion on how to solve it. I mean, if post is allowed, it's allowed. So how far does it go? For example, who produces the best Bryce landscapes on Rendo? Hobbit & rohi? And I there's a lot more post than Bryce going on there, and digital photos too, but I'd still class it as Bryce. But does that mean someone can render a 10 second ground plane in Bryce then paint and entire picture over it with a Wacom? Where do you draw the (metaphorical) line? I'm glad I don't have to decide on this one... :o Lastly, and more generally, I think there needs to be some thought given as to the real purpose of the competition. Again, I'm not going to make any more suggestions here, as AgentSmith has enough to think about without my witterings, but will this challenge be won by someone who:- a) has mastered Bryce to a greater extent than anyone else? or b) can produce the best piece of art using Bryce as a tool? IMO there's a great big difference between the two. I've seen images with astonishing effects and modelling that are dull and boring and leave me saying, "so what?" I've also seen less technically accomplished pieces that are packed with emotion and impact. (Some, like humorix, have the modelling AND the impact of course!) But my point is, which would be the driving factor? Or WOULD it be both? I reckon a short paragraph describing what the judges are looking for would be very helpful, especially if categories like "pure Bryce" exist. And there endeth the lesson. ;)

humorix, Voting: I'm with you, I want just a panel of judges to decide, not Renderosity. But you take it too far, lol, IF Renderosity would have to be used for some voting, only entrants would not be allowed to vote. But, l'll say again, my prerogative, is for NOT using Renderosity members to vote. But if so, Renderosity is aware of all the aspects of IP's/ISP's in these kinds of situations. And, while I can not/will not comment on Renderosity's tactics or technical abilities, I will try to alleviate any concerns by saying that Renderosity would not have any problems coping with this...at all. IF it comes to that. Catagories: The Bryce user who uses Poser would submit their entries under the "General Bryce" catagory. (Need a snappier name for that catagory...) But, yes the real contender for a fourth catagory that needs to be added the most...would be a Bryce&Poser specific catagory. If it can be swung, we'll make it happen. That's been my one thought of REALLY figuring in our large Poser crowd...and Curious Labs. Nah, the Modeling catagory is fairly redundant. The Landscape catagory is kinda too, not just as much. The specifics of 100% Bryce catagory may come down to the wishes of Renderosity and/or Corel. It can always be 100% Pure Bryce, humorix...lol. You just have to actually make those terrains IN Bryce along with those textures. It can be done, lol. Actually, personally I am up for SOME imports, but so far the word from "the man" has been 100% means 100%. We'll see... People with slow PC's and color-correcting: You will have 2-3 months to get it right, so come on...Can't hack even that? Don't enter the "Pure Bryce" catagory is all... Number of entries: Again...here's the hypothetical scenario taken further...The contest allows multiple entries, "hobbit" (a Master Brycer) submit's multiple entries into the contest in each of the three catagories. He wins all three Grand Prizes. Now...how pissed off are you, as a loser, or a 2nd place winner? How much do you wish entries were limited to one each now? Again, here's the other hypothetical scenario taken further...The contest allows multiple entries, you enter as many times as you wish and YOU WIN say...two Grand prizes. Then Renderosity, says "Congratualtions" and throws away one of your winning entries so some 2nd place person can win your prize. Now are you pissed? Now are you flaming Mod's and Admin's in the forums? Bet your butt you are... And, if a clause was put forth, alowing multiple entries but only one win, how second choice are you going to feel if you placed 2nd but then won 1st only because of a technicality? Yeah, you get the Prize, but your art was not only second best but also a charity case. (lol, that's how I see it) This contest should not stem merit but solidify it by demanding the ONE best work out of all entrants, not a volley of mediocre ones in an attempt to place. Must sleep, hope any of this made sense. AgentSmith

tuttle, "No Post" always, always sucks, but I will turn on my broken record again, lol. 1. I would have never been as far along in Bryce as I am now if it wasn't for no "post work" challenges. Even if I was just as far along, I just wouldn't be as complete as I am. (Not that I'm complete by a long shot, but you get the idea) 2. Slow PC prejudice - I have 46 pics in my gallery. The first 37 pics were all rendered on my following old PC: Intel Pentium ONE running at 200mhz, with 32mb ram, and a 1 mb video card. 3. Contest will give 2 months or more to work on your entry, that's fairly long. And, if the contest is a success, and you don't win, you will have 6 months to work on your next entry. I think anyone can produce something in 6 months. Allowing Post-work: This one's easy. Post work will consist of 2D editing of EXSISTING rendered scenes/meshes. Meaning... You can paint the clothes on a Poser figure, but you cannot paint the figure. You cannot paint a building, but you can add the vines, or cracks, etc, etc. -The post work has to be an addition to an already exsisitng object.- Then, there is of course, color-correcting, flares, noise, DOF, etc, which is fine. To attempt to answer your questions a), and b): It is always both, and it is invariably an infinite number of combination levels of the two. (Good point though, I'll make a note to see if there can be a "driving factor" manifesto given out) Thanks for the input eveybody. Tired/good night/morning Agentsmith

Sleep? Nah, I don't think you have time for that! ;) Well, all the above sounds reasonable to me. Especially the post-work rule. And yes, I suppose if you've got 2 months to do a pic and compositing is allowed then it doesn't really matter whether its a 1, 2 or 3Ghz machine. Or a 0.2! (Although I was rooting through my desk today and found a disk with a Vistapro landscape I rendered on a 25Mhz PC about 8 years ago! I guess I lied when I said I only started digital art this year!!!!!) The multiple entry thing is fair enough. It'll now just be a question of choosing which category I'm going to win... ;)

Ok! Heres me back with some more thoughts. A.S. on what you had to say about categories, well if its your best work which need be submitted, then why have categories at all? Why not just have a Best of the Bryce contest and divide the prizes up with the top ten entries? The whole idea of having categories was to identify usage of Bryce, other then that which is most obvious, and try and establish who are the best talents in that particular category. Going by the argument you have put forward, would you want to come first in a particular category by default, just cause Hobbit could submit only one entry and it was in a category other then yours? I do feel that we might be loosing focus with the prizes. The original idea of having a Bryce Gurus contest was to identify the best of talents. As Bryce was being used in areas other then just Landscape, and so as to identify envelope pushing usage, the idea of categories came up. So that such a contest would have the stature it deserved and so as to attract the best and most wide spread talent, the quest was to get the best of prizes. The idea being that over a period of time it will be the stature of the citation which will be the biggest draw and not the prizes which are being given out. Personally I would have no gripe about getting a second prize (or a third ort fourth or whatever) if I were to loose out to Hobbit, Sking, Roobol, etc for I would have lost out to a GURU! So going by the 3 hypotheses you threw to me, my responses are: - I would have no probs with a person (say HOBBIT) winning all 3 categories!! That would conclusively prove him to be a Bryce Guru! And that was the sole aim of the contest. - In case one was to be stripped off a prize, one still gets the recognition. Here Im distinguishing between citation and prize. You might be upheld as 3rd in a particular category, and if you have come second in another, you forsake the prize not the position. - In case I got a hand me down prize, well wouldnt it make greater consolation? I lost out to someone better then me (which tells me how I can further improve myself!) and got goodies to stop me from sulking! ;-)Wouldnt that be best of both the worlds? I feel it definitely would be preferable to coming first say, by default, cause the best Brycer couldnt submit an image in that particular category even if he/she was capable of submitting one. Another way of looking at it is, what would be the stature of Oscars if each film could submit itself towards only one category of judging, just cos more films could get Oscars? Would it then have turned into the premium citation that it is today? ;-) So Ill reiterate. If you have only the best image, then let it be the Best of the Best Bryce contest. In case you have categories, then allow people to submit to more then one category! I think Tuttle gave a very good idea about driving factor. Thanx Tuttle for the kind words you had for me too! :-) In terms of categories, taking a page again from the Photoshop Gurus contestcan we have one category as theme based? Something, which might end up being on the Renderosity Magazine Cover! Also can we limit the file size to 200 KB and not restrict the aspect ratio? I think there are still some areas in terms of postwork, which is pretty grey, which needs be covered! And finally, if we have external judges, why arent you participating A.S.? Avi :-)

...lol, I have worked at making this a catagory based contest because of these giant posts about the guru contest in which everyone wanted catagories... I've worked too hard and talked to way too many people about this (catagory) contest to go back and change everything now. And, to go over why we are having catagories is to just discuss the same things that have been thrown around before in threads way bigger than this one. Bottom line; with catagories, members feel they have a better chance at winning, without; they KNOW some Jedi Bryce master will come along and win, "so why enter?", and so we get a lame contest with hardly any entries, that won't be held again, and so on and so forth all the way down the line. The sole aim of the contest is NOT to have one person win a lot of duplicate prizes and duplicate guru's, which could very well happen. I would have a very big problem with one person winning in more than one catagory, or even multiple times in one catagory. I think the majority of members would also. If you're good, you're good and we will know it, no reason to know it multiple times. That's being repetitive for no reason. With catagories and single entries we show a broader range of guru's, not just one. And, for example, with 3 places in 3 catagories we get 9 members with prizes (tools) that they probably didn't have before, thus furthering the knowledge and skill of 9 people. BUT, with multiple entries, and a possibility of members winning more than one prize, we limit the amount of good these prizes can do. But, we do increase the amount of software prizes being sold on Ebay... If you are stripped of a prize you will NOT get the recognition. You think the contest would advertise that? That would be asking for it. Oh, YOU might be told, but no one else, lol. Can't really compare this to the Oscars, if you had say, directors with 5 film entries a piece then we could start comparing, lol. Also, a film isn't made by one person, a render is. MANY people have their BEST image, but I won't pit a no postwork against one with postwork against an abstract, they just cannot be judged against one another impartially. We cannot, must not, ignore the varied works of Bryce and their artists, with catagories and single entries we will get more entrants, and a broader range of winning pieces even in the same catagories. This will produce a more well-rounded contest and experience for everyone. Allowing only one entry FORCES artists to put their everything into a piece, it FORCES them to use what "guru" they have. This cannot be expected when they can enter multiple times. It cheapens the term "guru" as the contest uses it. Multiple entries will give a greater chance of winning through talent AND odds...rather than just talent. I don't believe that to be what makes a guru. Oh, yes I think the picture limit should be around even 300kb and no restrictions on aspect ratio or dimensions. Well, we may have to restrict the dimensions, but something big like, nothing bigger than 2000x2000 pixels or something. That's another thing I disliked about that Win Bryce 5 contest, entries couldn't be bigger than 640 x 640. Yuck. I would not be participating (voting) because I wish to avoid any issues of favoritism or discrimination. All the Mod's go over various Renderosity contest rules all the time, and I think this could be the best one, period. And, I want to help make it that way, that will be participation enough...trust me, lol. AgentSmith

Just a thought on sizing... This contest looks like it's going to be BIG and attract a LOT of attention. The winner, therefore, can surely expect his art to be displayed in some shape or form, and that (correct me if I'm wrong) will probably include print - if only from magazines that may cover the contest, but maybe posters too. With this in mind, isn't there a requirement to render to print dimensions, say around 5000 x 3500? After all, if someone decides to submit a 600 x 600 it's never going to get print exposure anywhere! It's way too small. So should there be guidelines on this? BTW - I'm not suggesting the SUBMITTED version be 5000 x 3500 or whatever, but shouldn't there be a "for-print" CMYK lurking in the background "just in case"??? ;)

for "submit a 600 x 600" read "create an original at 600 x 600" duh - how can I expect people to know what I'm talking about when I get it wrong myself???? ;)

Good freaking point. I'm working on a pic for magazine submission right now for 3D World Mag, and actually they say they can even take images that are 500 pixels. But, what they like are images that are 3,000 pixels. I'll have to get with our Renderosity magazine people and get their input on what would be a "sweet spot" for what they would like vs. what members could still handle as far rendering times go. Thanks! AS

Hmmmmm AS, I can see your mind is quite made up on the category issue, so I'll rest my case ;-)!

But any time you feel like allowing entry to at least two categories, lemme know and I'll pick up the case and start running again! ;-)

bookmarked :)

I was just wondering, what if there were a themed category too, like our challenges? That would really level playing fields, for then people wouldn't be able to submit images they might have created 5 months back and not placed it in any gallery!.