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 ?

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.

3dcheapskate posted at 10:35 PM Tue, 7 January 2025 - #4492671

Another couple of  suggestion, this time regarding voting.

I've always found the voting period to be dead space - it's easy to lose interest and forget about the contest. 

With community voting the number of votes each entry has received is never given (insert your favourite conspiracy theory here as to why, if you're of that ilk). It can be disheartening if you've put a lot of effort into an entry but have no idea whether you just missed winning or whether you got zero votes. I think you need to show the results.

But why stop there. Maybe during voting you could have the number of votes each image had received so far displayed ?  I wonder how that would affect engagement ? 

The suggestion to display if a user received zero votes is the single most idiotic thing that I have ever seen in any forum anywhere, because not only would you create an unimaginably degrading and disheartening situation for any such user but by displaying the number of votes received also directly allows other users to see who received zero votes. In a community anywhere and especially a gradually diminishing one that is largely comprised of willing hobbyists and amateurs, to actively display for all to see "who got the least" is a certain way to kill of any future participation and instead directly encourages elitism and "gatekeeping" mentality.

Deliberately cutting the time allowed for people to actively enter and vote would serve the same purpose of discouraging those with limited time from entering such events, for the most part I would imagine, or possibly just like to imagine, that the only people who would not vote are those not actively involved in the contest, though I imagine this could be incorrect.

Gradually this would cut away many of the artists who have limited time and/or resources, and artists who potentially already realise they are "behind the curve" but no community should ever and I mean Ever! encourage such a moronically selfish notion that a hard truth won't do any harm because I forewarn you that it would kill off anything far before anything else, including AI, ever would.

In a world where software and hardware is moving faster than the budgets that many have for what is a hobby, to encourage an environment that actively targets the meek under the guise of being a form of "encouragement" is an utterly disgraceful suggestion.

caraiba posted at 5:53 PM Mon, 9 September 2024 - #4489173

My oh my! Thank you Lobo and Peter, you guys are great and soooooooooooooo helpfull! Yeah I'll be posing in Daz mostly. So thank you very, very much guys! That solved a lot of my headches. 

If you have anything you need help with you can always drop me a PM,

Happy rendering

As Infinity10 mentions, it is far easier to export as an OBJ, assuming that you will be posing in Daz? The bridge is often unreliable in my experience but do bear in mind that Daz and Blender work in different units or measurement too.

Hopefully this will help a little, these are the export setting I find the best.

I'm watching.

That's a great idea. They can be tricky trying to get certain ideas across but they can be fun too.

Thank you, this is more me saying "I'm doing it" and working out where I will be showing it, so it will be happening though it might be a bit?? Sporadic in posting as writing four stories and promoting my first released book is quite time consuming (Though I realise that even writing a silent story is still effectively writing a fifth story)

I guess working out how to do this will be fun/nausea/tourettes inducing?

Thank you including my image in this weeks staff picks.

Thank you very much for the kind note in the staff picks

Wolfenshire posted at 1:08 AM Fri, 26 April 2024 - #4484019

Never give up, good advice.