Since it was my original post[http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1893915 (19th. August 2004)] that started this at times, quite tedious 'challenge' I hope you don't mind if I personally make one or two observations. The photograph, part of a newly discovered two-book collection, which I originally posted, was of the Egyptian rooms in the Ninevah Room of the North Transept of the Crystal Palace circa 1853. The collection of photographs eventually sold at auction for 13,500, three times estimate. English Heritage and the Crystal Palace Foundation were the successful bidders, thank God for historians and philanthropic organisations. Draculaz has made a representative image of the North Transept of the 1851 build Crystal Palace at Hyde Park in London. In doing so he has all but ignored the 'master' photograph, which I posted with my original thread. Draculaz seems not to have read TheBrysters original challenge thread, 'Instead of you and me doing the September 'Mystery' challenge, we'll go head to head on a render of the Crystal Palace as posted.' Obviously the challenge referred to the Crystal Palace building as posted and not any old Crystal Palace building, albeit the original. Virginia University is obviously an esteemed place of learning but if you take as your reference point a building which was dismantled at least six years before the building in the 'posted' photograph you cannot expect too many brownie points for accuracy! You may wonder why the design was changed between the two builds. It was probably over the worry that the original building may have one day given way to resonance and collapsed. Doubts were raised early on about the stability and safety of the 1851 structure - doubts which could not be ignored, as they were expressed by Professor Airey, the Astronomer Royal, and by Richard Turner, who had constructed the Palm House at Kew Gardens. The amount of strain on the iron girders was calculated not to be a problem, as they were designed to take several times the expected weight. What was seen as a problem was resonance - the worrying idea that a large crowd, moving regularly inside the structure, could cause it to vibrate more and more until it collapsed. An experiment was set up, with a test construction, on which 300 workmen walked backwards and forwards, regularly, irregularly, and then jumping simultaneously in the air. Finally, to induce the most regular oscillations possible, the army sappers and miners corps were called in, and marched repeatedly in step across the structure. The maximum girder movement was 1/4 inch, and building work was continued. But resonance may still have nagged and the rebuilt Crystal Palace suffered design change under the watchful eye of Paxton, the original builder. Back to Draculaz's picture it is difficult to judge but the scale of the figure apropos the Transept cannot be accepted without further reference points. The Transept was 48-ft. wide at this juncture and 108-ft. high. And why the tint to the picture? Black and white photography was possible in the late 1850's, as demonstrated here by Philip Delamotte, his photographs being taken somewhere between 1858 and 1862. Mr.Delamotte, part of the second generation of British photographers also taught drawing to the Royal family. There is no need for an artificially ageing filtered tint as the structure is so obviously of a bygone era, if not the solitary figure, a sap to modernism in my humble opinion, and again not true to the original premise of the challenge or the building itself. A liberty in other words. It would have done better to introduce a near 100-ft elm tree beneath the arched roof, the reason why the Transept was added in the first place. To protect and preserve two elms (one at either end). Thank God for naturalists. It is also difficult to ignore the petulance demonstrated by some of Draculaz' remarks in wishing to redraw the rules, amend his image etc., etc., A juvenile attitude only compounded by words such as ' I admit Bryster's slightly better than mine'. Grudging praise indeed! TheBrysters picture is obviously the superior effort here although I would strongly recommend removing that horrible sky and replacing with a near single and unobtrusive colour alternative. In any event the picture is a much better one after desaturation even with the sky! Vote......TheBryster by the proverbial country mile. Bye now...................Dennis

My .02, I think both were excellent and both used some artistic license. Just my opinion, but you seemed to be a bit harsh on Drac.
Peace.

Message edited on: 10/02/2004 09:27

rolls eyes Thanks for those interesting yet coughanalcough remarks. Allow me to make a few of my own: 1. The challenge was never fully laid out or moderated as far as I'm concerned. It did not mention what exactly we would be modelling but generally stated the crystal palace and gave an obscure reference shot to it. While AS was mentioned as the moderator of the challenge, I don't recall him making any threads towards an acceptance of that fact. As far as I understood the challenge, the main idea was to model the crystal palace with Wings3D only while Bryster would do it with booleans. Initially, I did take it upon myself to model the ENTIRE thing. 2. To be an asshole, I was not perfectly happy with the idea of the challenge, since it was something potentially massive that would ultimately come down to who had the bigger, better computer. I'm not sure if you've really followed it, but the three people that have done it, myself, Bryster and brycetech had something around the lines of 300 (and 190 after), 300 and 700mb respectively in terms of scene sizes. Granted, brycetech did go ahead and modelled the whole thing. What it came down to was creating a few start-up models and multi-replicating those ad-nauseam. Unless Bryster would model the Simbel statues with booleans, I don't see how those might be included in the challenge (as were the plants, which would obviously be imports for both of us). 3. To model the statues or the plants was therefore ridiculous. To expect someone to make a perfect replica with barely any reference material is also idiotic. To continue on a scene in Bryce of all programs (or any rendering program) when it reaches 300mb is idiotic. It might take mad skills in Bryce to boolean model a couple of farkin' hexagonal beams and that trancept or whatever you call it, but in Wings it's a piece of cake. Replicating them is not a challenge. As well, as I recall, Bryster did have quite a head start on me by having access to the original drawings and so on (he can correct me if I'm wrong) while my only points of reference where the two pictures I had from the abu simbel expo and the university thing which was devoid of any farkin' trees. My mistake. 4. In terms of the actual render I made, that was my decision, after the model had been taking up 300mb on my 30gig hard disk. I cut it down to 190 or whatever by losing the windows. Bryster was largely unavailable as he toiled on his version, and I had 100 more interesting ideas going through my head. So I made a render with a figure in the middle of it that I begged off someone since I don't have Poser. I enjoyed the challenge, ultimately, because it did pose some general problems in terms of organizing it in Bryce and scaling things properly and so on. But I was happy to end it like that since I knew that I had finished it in less than a week in terms of modelling. I'm sorry if the idea and the PS filters have attacked your sense of artistic taste, but my thought was to covey the greatness of that hall together with the age of the building. 5. You have absolutely ZERO right to imply that I am childish or for that matter criticize my art in any way, shape or form. Bryster did not let me know of the fact that he was posting that thread, or asked permission from me to use my work, and he did not use my latest piece in asking for votes. I don't specifically care about the first two points as much as the third. I'm not mad at him or anything, since I didn't even expect him to finish the piece given the huge scene size that I was fighting with and that he himself met. Since I didn't really care of who won or whatever at that point, I conceded to him, as you might have read in my last post on the matter. I felt that it didn't really matter in the end, since it was a friendly challenge between two people who loved what they did. To boot, I did think his was significantly better in terms of exactness. Then again he did have more reference material than myself. 6. "Bye now...................Dennis" ? WTF is that? You're accusing me of childishness and then perform a hit and run? Screw you and the connection you rode in on. When I'll need critique for my work I'll be sure not to ask a self-important and long-winded idiot with a Crystal Palace beam stuck up his ass. Mihnea

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=536763&Start=1&Artist=Dennisld&ByArtist=Yes

Now if only you'd been smart enough, drac, you coulda just copied the attached, and been SURE of a) accuracy b) winning And give over with that 'fun' thing - this is a serious business ;^)

yeah i saw that. but i wasn't there for the challenge. it's a great modelling job, but the render's actually pretty bad. i wouldn't vote for it based solely on the modelling, to be perfectly honest. drac

just read the blurb underneath, and it's actually the same version that you did - 1851 Anyhoo, takes too much energy to read yards and yards of text.

there's a big nose, who knows, and trips you up and laughs when you fall
-The Smiths, Cemetary Gates..;) The collary is that somewhere on the net, there's going to be someone who knows more about any one thing than you do..I don't remember seeing your artistic license revoked any time recently, Drac..whether it's the accuracy or detail (there was that girder in section 3, where you popped a rivet..just zoom in x1000 times, you can see sunlight going through it clear down to the floor..;)it's more trouble than I was prepared to go to..;) we'll just have to agree to disagree..though sometimes, me boy, you do seem a magnet for controversy..;)

Controversy means nothing to someone as diplomatic as drac. Still, people have no right whatsoever to go flaming drac because he made an amazing work of 3D modelling.

If he was the judge and there was a $1 millon dollar prize, then let there be such analytical and nit-picking criticism. But the challenge was done just for the heck of it, and the only thing the winner could really claim at most is bragging rights. So what if it's not %100 perfect - who cares? It's still pretty amazing that they both got as far as they did.

agrees with paul

Dennisld: I would like to thank you for several things. 1)Posting the pictures that started this challenge. 2) Supplying the enormous amount of background information in your various posts. 3) Your comments and critiques. In reply, I would like to say that I'm disappointed that you found the challenge 'quite tedious'. I had hoped that everyone would find it both interesting and fun. I certainly did, and in doing so I found out a little more about the palace than I already did. Between us, Drac, Brycetech and myself, gave Wings3d and Bryce a run for its money, pushed the envelope a bit and learned a little more about modeling. I desperately didn't want this to end up as a slanging match between artists, at the worst Drac and I would be sticking our tongues out at each other going 'NA-NA-NA-NA' and having a good laugh! To everyone else: I did in fact pm AS and request that he moderated the 'challenge'. Sadly, he was apparently very busy at the time and in fact abscent from the forum for quite some time. It was therefore necessary to go ahead with the challenge and hope that things didn't get out of hand. The challenge was in my view meticulously set out and the obejectives made very clear, In that, the task was to re-create the Crystal Palace AS SEEN in the 'obscure' reference shot. Drac states that he was not happy with the challenge. How is that? When it was he who called ME out, calling me a chicken for not accepting to take him on for 2 days whilst I was out of town. I cannot accept that it came down to who had the bigger/better pc. My working folder reached 1.5 gigs on a 40gig hdd. My 2.2 celeron was fairly creaking by the time I got to doing my final render. And I did model the Statue/s with metaballs, but was so disappointed with the results I thought it best to leave them out of the finished piece. As I mentioned in my post on the 'VOTE' thread, all my reference material came from the internet. There was nothing there that Drac couldn't access himself(unless he was in China)but most of my reference data came from the 2 pics posted by DennisLD. From those 2 pics I was able to extrapolate dimensions, pov, the number of window segments etc, etc. and yes, I was able to clear my desk for this project. When I saw Drac's piece I was in fact stunned by it. A nice pov with a pretty cool lighting setup. A bit arty for my taste but a winner nonetheless. In my defense,again, I have to say that Drac knew the day for posting the finals. And as AS was not about, I took the liberty of posting what I BELIEVED to be Drac's final on his behalf. I do not however believe that influenced the voting, nor should it have. I apologize again to Drac for not consulting him prior to starting the thread. As for needing Drac's permission, I was now running the challenge so what else was I supposed to do? In the end, as Drac has quite rightly said, it was supposed to be a friendly challenge. DennisLd's post was I feel an unnecessarilly(SS) harsh critique of Drac's work and I accept that my finished piece could have been better lit and thank Dennis for his vote. Finally, I would like to ask the permission of Drac, Brycetech, Frogdot, and Dennisld to allow me to post thier versions of the Crystal Palace on a special page I am creating for my website, all properly accredited and complete with links to their sites etc. Regards The Bryster

go right ahead dude. my apologies on the misunderstanding with the reference pics. afaik, you had more than i. all the same, great, meticulous work on your behalf. and like i said before, between the two of us, you are the clear winner =) Drac

Careful, Drac! You're in danger of becoming a diplomat! Hats off to ya! I'll post a heads-up when I've updated my site.

Beyond gratuitous spleen venting, I'm not sure what this thread was about, LOL. It seemed to have something to do with the Crystal Palace challenge, but exactly what, I don't know. Hope everyone feels better now. :^)