February / March Challenge #1 - "Kiss My Glass"

Check out all the thumbnails at the above link (two pages of them), and come back in here to place your vote.

Voting - you can only vote once, and no voting for yourself. You place your vote(s) by listing your top 3 favorites in order of which one you like the best, like this;

**Member name - 3 points
Member name - 2 points
Member name - 1 point

**Please feel like listing any other Honorable Mentions you also liked, or reasons why you picked what you did, etc.

You must list three members, and their points. You can only give one member 3 points, one member 2 points and one member one point.

We take a couple three days to aquire all the voting, and then I will add up the points, and declare the winners in a new thread. **The 1st Place Winner will decide what the theme of the next Challenge will be.
**
Start the voting!!!!!!!

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"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

death at midnight - 3 pts drawbridge - 3 pts agent smith - 3 pts .....AND you want me too choose? Almost as torture as my MAC went through rendering my entry. Well the reason for these choices are the quality and professional finish to these brilliant entries. My hat is off to you guys!!! Congrats to all contestants who entered and good luck. It was a good challenge.

3-2-1 voting, please, thanks.  ;o)

(cool avatar)

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

death at midnight - 3 pts drawbridge - 2 pts agent smith - 1 pts Thanks AgentSmith for spotting the mistake although it really is a representation of how hard it was to actually choose between the 3 pics!!!! Your pics are always top quality. Want to change the avatar, well update it really but my modeling skills have a lot to be desired.

No prob! ;o)

Avatar alien looks...almost like blue metal. Love da blumetahl....

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"

Tough one. There certainly were more than 3 that deserve praise, and deciding was particularly hard. In the end, I chose for subject matter originality, for lack of a better term; really great glass; and POV:

drawbridgep-3
prae -2
SavantNoir -1

drawbridgep 3 points
Death_at_Midnight 2 points
AgentSmith 1 point

but many terrific entries deserving!

My gallery @ Renderosity

My justifications: The two first ones for the innovation of the forms and the extreme creativity. It finishes it is for the simplicity of the composition and the ideia to remember the old valves.

Thandaluz - 3
SavantNoir - 2
Death_at_Midnight - 1

ICM - 3 pts
aliensprog - 2 pts
SavantNoir - 1 pt

(Ya gotta loved tabbed browsing in times like this!)

Hugz from Phoenix, USA

Victoria

Remember, sometimes the dragon wins. Correction: MOST times.

I think I'm going to have to go for

ICM - 3 pts
Death at Midnight - 2 pts
SavantNoir - 1pt

Have to say I really want to see the Death At Midnight entry larger, it nearly got my number one spot.

Death at midnight (50): 3
AgentMith (52): 2
Donniemc0 (31):1

drawbirdgep - 3
donniemc0 - 2
orbital  - 1

AgentSmith - 3pts
Death_at_Midnight - 2pts
Drawbridge - 1pt

Bryce Forum Coordinator....

Vision is the Art of seeing things invisible...

What a great theme and excellent images all around! aliensprog - 3 ICM -2 Savantnoir - 1 HM - drawbirdgep, Agent Smith and Death at Midnight

Death at Midnight - 3 pt
SavantNoir - 2 pt
AgentSmith - 1 pt

Good spelling is overaytead

DonniemcO = 3
Prae = 2
Skiwillgee = 1

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

drawbridgep - 3 pts
Thandaluz - 2 pts
aliensprog - 1 pt

drawbridge -3 pts (awesome use of glass- big thumbs up)
Analog-X - 2 pts (super nice render)
evielouise -1 pt (pretty good for a beginner)

They were all fantastic. I don't usually get involved with these contests, in that public voting usually applies weight by politics and not artistic value. This multi-vote system does help to offset personal friendship bias.. I'd like to see it extended to 5 votes. Then maybe I would pay more attention to these contests. You could set up an offsite web page just for voting contests to make this easier with a hyper-link to the announcement page.  I had to do some research to figure out how to vote on this. Hugs from Dave :^)

If all you have is a hammer.. then all problems look like nails!

EvieLouise  3 points

Great job my friend.

drawbridgep - 3 pts (The DOF and the multitude of angles on the Glass got me)
Agent Smith - 2 pts (Texture master)
Death_at_midnight - 1 pt (these are amazing works of detail)

I have to say all of these turned out fantastic! Kudos to Everyone for pushing your computers to the edge. You're all Bryce Maniacs.......YeeeHaww

___
Ockham's razor- It's that simple

Boy, it sure isn't easy to figure out how to VOTE:

EvieLouise 3pts

Great job girl!

ICM                              -3
Death_at_Midnight   -2
Stoner                         -1

I have to say, choosing which ones to vote for was really hard.  Everyone did a great job on their artwork.

Death-at-Midnight 3 pt   wow! what detail
lemonjim   2 pt
Thandaluz  1 pt

Thanks for the forum AgentSmith!

So hard to choose
Thandaluz 3 pt
electroglyph 2 pt
aeello 1 pt
I made my choices because they evoked a feeling as well as following the contest criteria.

Death_at_Midnight - 3 points ek-art - 2 points ICM - 1 point

Death_at_Midnight 3 points
ICM 2 points
drawbridgep 1 point

This was very painful!! 
Can you not make this voting a little easier. Thanks sis

**EvieLouise 3pts
**Nice work Evie!!

3 - Paul Francis
2 - ICM
1 - Tigi 63

SavantNoir 3
Prae 2
Death at Midnight 1

Decisions were hard, and based on the following:  Original work done in Bryce and executed in Bryce.  Honorable mentions are ICM, swiehart, and electroglyph, all of whom did incredible work, but either did not clarify if they actually made their models, or stated that they made the models in another program.

SavantNoir got the top nod from me based not only on how pretty his post is, but unlike some other comments I have seen here, he truly is a beginner with only 40 posts over the last 40 days, and his progression has been amazing. I do not consider someone that has made over 400 posts since 2004 a beginner.  lol

Death_at_Midnight 3 points
lemonjim   2 pt
aeello 1 pt

Death_at_Midnight - 3pts drawbridgep - 2pts SavantNoir - 1pt HM to AgentSmith, Burpee and Aeelo. Next time I will have an idea of what I want to do BEFORE the challenge deadline : )

Death at Midnight: 3
Burpee: 2
Bad T: 1

seiwert - 3 pts
aliensprog - 2 pts
aeello - 1 pt

This was very tough to pick just three.

drawbridge  3
ICM                2
wawadave    1

HM's are innumerable.  AgentSmith, Death at Midnight, Paul Francis, Burpee and others

This was a great contest. 

Death at Midnight - 3 points

drawbridgep - 2

Incognitas - 1

Great work from everyone!!
Death at Midnight 3points
SavantNoir 2points
Drawbridgep 1point

That was a tough decision!

Attached Link: Featheredmonkey.com

Here's my vote.

Aeello -          3pts
Agentsmith - 2pts
Savantnoir -  1pt

Good job all.

Quote - Boy, it sure isn't easy to figure out how to VOTE:

EvieLouise 3pts
boekenwuurm 2pts
wawadave 1pt

Great job girl!

prae 3 points
Electroglyph 2 points
Death at Midnight 1 point

Highly commended in no particular order Shack,donniemc0,siewert,ICM,AgentSmith amd drawbridgep.

Very hard..Just like marking GCSE art exams, you want to give them all a pass mark.

hm, difficult...
Death_at_Midnight 3
Tom 271                  2
Twalker                    1

HM: ICM, AgentSmith, Wawadave, Shak, thandaluz, Rahachrohos and others

Prae - 3
Burpee - 2
waldomac  - 1

 

Really really tough this time. First I tried to eliminate every work that fell through in some way. I really liked my own glass but ran out of time to do anything about the hard transmission through the glass. There were lots scenes that were spectacular in one way but fell through in another. Scenes where nothing but Bryce skies were reflected when the object was in a room. Scenes like my own where the transmission was too flat. I saw no-smoothing and jagged renders (or resizing post work) that ruined otherwise excellent renders. I still had about ten to choose from.

Since so many votes are in and I doubt I'll have any effect on the placement between Death at midnight and drawbridgep I hope you both forgive me that I don't vote for either one of you. Your positions seem safe from where I'm standing. I'm going to use my votes for some other purpose.

Agent Smith-3 points
I can't believe that a 12 is all you got. Do you realize that even eviemarie is kicking your “A Double-Smith.” Some kind of reverse discrimination is going on. Oh that AS, he'll always do so much better that anything he enters has to be superior just to be considered. I don't think you are number 1 but I don't think you disserve to have 1/5th of the leaders points.

ICM - 2 points
Same thing. I'm not even that thrilled with the shape or design. In terms of realism however this looks like something that could be sitting on my desk.

twalker - 1point
I've had to take hours and hours of photos of tiffany on black velvet. Maybe your render was just too simple to attract much attention. All the lines are clean and smooth and I see something in the reflections. Keep up the good work!

ok here are my picks though i could swap back and forth for many others hard choices to make!

drawbridgep 3
skiwillgee 2
Death_at_Midnight 1

 

Nr 14 - 3 pts
Nr 11 - 2 pts
Nr 52 - 1 pt

without going into too much depth...HA! 
i hereby cast my vote with the following reasoning. Firstly, i was never going to be drawn to any "realism" in this challenge i.e the HDRI images which although stunning and creative, were still inside the box too much for me. sorry but at least i am reasoning out my votes. the challenge subject was inspired coming at the time of bryce 6, and i hope all you brycers are ashamed of yourselves using up all that electricity and shortening the lifespan of our planet by about 5.7 years, just to render  a decent glass image.:)
brilliant entries all round and after visiting, making a shortlist, re-visiting, making another shortlist re-re visiting, i vote as follows:
savantnoir- 3 points  - shoot me i like symmetry and clear cut definition, this was beautiful!
Paul Francis - 2 points- paul rightly gave credit to the ministry scene he used , but he made this image exceptional without overdoing it. and just far enough  outside the box for my tastes!
Aeello -1 point - although similar to orbitals entry in subject matter, this one edged it for me because it was a true "bryce" image which followed the brief. dominant glass as the subject and...yup, shoot me again. a bryce sky being reflected! well i liked it. 
honourable mentions to boekenwuurm (yer killin the planet with those 23 hour renders man! lol) and Agent smith (keep it up kid, you might just get somewhere :))
 a wee bit disturbed to see a flurry of votes for a first time entrant who shall be nameless . its not about voting for yer pals guys its about being subjective.

like others before me, i doubt my votes will change the two horse race and congratulations to the eventual winner because the standard of entries was superb

 

I refrain from voting, being a contestant...BUT if I were to vote it would be with much ambivalency.  When ONLY considering the quality of glass, Drawbridge, Death at Midnight, Electroglyph, ranachronos, seiwert, ICM, and Agent_Smith did incredible jobs.  Also, reflexexperssion did an excellent job in his composition and premium render, but unfortuantely, I think the blurred transmissions is not what the "glass" contest was necessarily all about, so he did not get the recognition his excellent composition would otherwise deserve.

If I were to vote on a Bryce competition, then I would have to rule most of the above out, and consider Thandaluz, lemonjim, and others that made their entries entirely in Bryce.  I suppose this perspective is probably an often-debated one.  A person could import a picture on a 2-d plane, click render, and post it as a Bryce peice.  Is it?  One of my all time favorite Bryce artists is Rohi, and he uses a ton of programs to accomplish his fantastic art.  In this case, "art" is the objective, and the plethora of tools on how to accomplish that objective are vast, and those that master them are owed great respect for their accomplishments.  In the case of a Bryce contest, my thought was..."do the best you can with Bryce" as the primary objective.

Great job everyone!

They were all spectacular !

EvieLouise     3 pts
Drawbridge    2 pts
ICM                1 pt

Death at midnight - 3 points
Twalker - 2 points
Tigi63 - 1 point

SavantNoir 3
Prae 2
Death at Midnight 1

SavantNoir 3
Thandaluz 2
Prae 1

savantnoir- 3 points  
Thandaluz 2points
Aeello -1 point

drawbridgep ......3
Agent Smith .......2
Death_at_midnight ......1

All refraction.... All specularity.....   All reflection....  All transparency....  All glass....

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AgentSmith - 3 Points
Drawbridgep - 2 Points
ICM - 1 Point

ICM - 3 points
Death by Midnight - 2 points
Agent Smith - 1

What's with all the vote cheating going on?   I guess a number of people signed up just to vote?  ;-)

---------
Phillip Drawbridge
Website 
Facebook

Death_at_Midnight - 3
Orbital - 2
aeello - 1

Everyone did an amazing job! It was really hard to choose!

A side note here:
I knew when I made something (all in bryce) that I would not
stand a chance in you know where ?? (smile)
However,my few votes are from my family and two friends:
I don't ever think of cheating-but people ,friends,family have to know
your in a contest:
I am a beginner (don't know too much and have a lot to learn:
this was just in fun!
Or?? are they giving the winners a trip to Australia lol:
in that case I hope someone wins big time:
Your all so great ,your  artwork is amazing,it's one of the reasons
 I joined many years ago here at Renderosity
I even wear  thier T_S lol:
hugs and good luck to all!!!

I think this is all in fun, but I do it as a learning experience. There's so many artists here in this one forum alone who have works I admire and skills that make me go :-o  What makes it hard to choose with the voting is so many different interpretations of glass. With everyone's entry I try to place my mind into a mindset I think the artist is trying to show. With my entry it evolved from Tom271 and then from a comment TheBryster made about transistors. I admire and respect everyone here and take objectively comments made. I have a history degree too, so part of my interpretation of glass is historical.

Art is often an extension of the artist.

I hope everyone has fun in these challenges and not to look at them like some sort of art battle, but firstly to have fun, secondly to express oneself with Bryce, thirdly to learn from; and to consider everyone here a friend, not an opponent. That's what I do, anyway. :-)

Quote -
I knew when I made something (all in bryce) that I would not
stand a chance in you know where ?? (smile)

Same here....but its all in fun and gives a chance for people
to see you're artwork :)

ICM = 3
Agent Smith = 2
Prae = 1

I dont know Bryce so it’s a bit hard for me to vote (I can’t distinguish between a nice picture and a technological masterpiece).....but I do know enough to say this: 

There has always been those who enlist their friends to vote for them & final placings will always be somewhat distorted by the presence of a few who really shouldn’t be there at all. Whilst it’s not considered cheating, it’s still vote-rigging. And whatever label the sympathy (aka friendship) vote goes by; it discredits the recipient and is a rude gesture to “the sport” AND the other entrants.

This sort of thing puts some people off entering  or voting on future competitions & encourages other entrants to enlist the help of their long-suffering friends too....but so long as those oh-so-genuine-Bryce-Lovers get their sympathy votes......I guess its all good?

It's just a I see a lot of people that joined over the past few days making votes and I've gotta think that they are either fake accounts, or, as you said, friends and family who signed up just to vote.  In either case, I'm not sure having friends and family log in to vote for you is really in the spirit of the competition.
That's turning it into more of a popularity contest and less of an art contest.

but yeah, it's all in fun and it's not supposed to be serious, so I guess I shouldn't care.

Good luck

Quote - A side note here:
I knew when I made something (all in bryce) that I would not
stand a chance in you know where ?? (smile)
However,my few votes are from my family and two friends:
I don't ever think of cheating-but people ,friends,family have to know
your in a contest:
I am a beginner (don't know too much and have a lot to learn:
this was just in fun!
Or?? are they giving the winners a trip to Australia lol:
in that case I hope someone wins big time:
Your all so great ,your  artwork is amazing,it's one of the reasons
 I joined many years ago here at Renderosity
I even wear  thier T_S lol:
hugs and good luck to all!!!

---------
Phillip Drawbridge
Website 
Facebook

Quote - A side note here:
I knew when I made something (all in bryce) that I would not
stand a chance in you know where ?? (smile)
However,my few votes are from my family and two friends:
I don't ever think of cheating-but people ,friends,family have to know
your in a contest:
I am a beginner (don't know too much and have a lot to learn:
this was just in fun!
Or?? are they giving the winners a trip to Australia lol:
in that case I hope someone wins big time:
Your all so great ,your  artwork is amazing,it's one of the reasons
 I joined many years ago here at Renderosity
I even wear  thier T_S lol:
hugs and good luck to all!!!

Well, to put my point on this in, so far as I count, I have no votes.  That's ok though, because I really like the piece that I made, and it is all in fun.  As far as friends and family, I could have called in my entire clan(literally since I'm close to all of my cousins, uncles, and aunts, and I would be in the lead now, but I didn't do that because it would not have been fair.   Besides, I don't want someone to vote on my art because I asked them too or because they were family, but rather because they actually liked it over the other entries.  Good luck to all.

Does rigging the vote happen often?I expected old Renderosity friends to vote for their particular friends but not families for family members...It's so,so juvenile.I would feel cheap winning that way and frankly would withdraw if I found my family doing any such thing.

Votes and family/friends is always a difficult issue to discuss. I find myself agreeing with both sides. It shouldn't become a popularity contest. Here's an interesting link: 
http://www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=13102   

With Renderosity getting 200 new memberships daily, and with 3 days of voting, 600 new memberships during our voting period, there's bound to be people voting who haven't posted before, some may be family, friends, colleagues, etc. I know I don't keep silent about my gallery, and try to spread the word that I do post stuff here and try to bring more new people to Bryce. I've been invited to speak in classrooms at the university here, ~30 art students a class, and I tell them about my only gallery on the 'net.. here at Renderosity. There are also those people who follow a particular artist, rarely ever leaving a comment, just one of those nameless viewers.

But yeah, careful about making it extreme. 

Quote -

But yeah, careful about making it extreme. 

Don't worry I won't..I just find it odd that folk bring their clan along with them...Me I leave them behind mainly because I want to do things on my own. 20 odd years of being trailed by children leave one seeking some independence.

Heheh! I like that :-)

In my opinion the target of a contest is to get reckoning for your work and measure it with others., maybe grab some tips somewhere. 
In that light taking friends and family for voting make no sense.

That is also the reason that this is my first upload (heck, this is also just my second post LOL), I was afraid it wasn't good enough (or that my englisch through dyslectia/dutch not sufficient was/is) :tongue1:

Yeah, but it's also not about winning or losing or being good enough or not.   It's about creating a image and displaying it with others all along a similar theme.   We could quite easily still do this without voting or having a winner, but then who would pick the next comp?  :-)

---------
Phillip Drawbridge
Website 
Facebook

How about instead of adding up the number of votes, it gets done with some statistics... that way we could account for outliers.

Lemonjim 3 points
Prae 2 points
Ranachronos 1 point

Some very nice renders here, tough to choose 3.

Aliensprog   -  3pts
SavantNoir   -  2pts
Prae              -  1pts

Gosh, what a tough, tough, tough decision this was.  so many amazing images.  If this challenge had been about just refraction and reflection of glass( which is what I thought it was suppose to be originally), I would have voted much differently.  Since you only really needed to have glass in your image...well, this is how I voted then.

Naoo - 3 points   (Naoo's image appealled to me but he also shows excellent refraction of glass in the image.  We can see the glass bending the lines on the background)

SavantNoir - 2 points  (unfortunately no refraction and little reflection but the glass has a wonderful realistic glass quality and I like the image)

Death_at_Midnight - 1 point (excellent refraction and reflective properties...cool pic)

Honorable mentions?  Hahahahaaa....Prae, aliensprog, Lemonjim, orbital, ICM, donniemc0, and on and on....

Geezers, just reading back here and I really feel like the Bryce forum is obssessed with the thought that people are cheating.  Every time  I come here I read something about possible duplicate accounts and family and friends.   I think it's a lot less than you all make it out to be.  Believe me, I can't even get my family and friends to look at my art, can you?  You'll always have a person or two that begs for votes.  Oh well.  You can't let these few ruin your enjoyment of the greater good going on here. 

I think the bigger problem is people voting for their favorite image rather than voting on the parameters set for the challenge.  It should be made clear exactly what is expected from those who are voting.

I voted purely for the images I really liked.  I want to know who won.

Heheheh...anyone ever tell you that you're cute?

In response to Burpee:  yeah, i know.  lol.  I went a different route, for when we think of glass we tend to think of rather transparent glass objects.  I probably shoud have gone more that way, but I was playing with texturized glass, more for my growth; learning how to use multi-channel manipulation for effect.  Everything is glass (except for the chrome), it is just not transparent glass. Reflectivity is set at 100%, just camera angle is high, looking down, deliberately minimizing picking up other objects so each glass peice could stand distinct.  Given a chance to do it again, I think I may have done things differently.  I love hindsight!  Now, if i can figure out how to live in the past, I could take advantage of it!  lol.

Savant, why do it different or regret what you did?  Your image is fantastic.  The glass looks like glass.  I was just going by what the original thread challenge stated "the more refraction and reflection the better".  I guess I had assumed that that was an important part of the challenge at first.  I don't think it is now.  After reading it again, I think it's just using glass, playing with glass and coming up with the best image you could.  You did :)

Aw.....thanks!  I liked my picture a lot at the time, but I have now been playing with Bryce for 2 weeks longer. Now that I am finally getting a little more technical expertise under my belt, I find it much harder to please myself, striving for absolute realism as best I can.  I have Vue, 3dMax, Houdini, Maya, and a few more programs awaiting me (still shrink-wrapped), but I wanted to learn how to work Bryce before moving on to others.  I think it has been almost 3 months now since I first started, and I have learned about 1/10th of it!  I betcha everyone that looks at their own work is much harder on themselves then the outside observer.  I see 2 things in my post I wish I woulda fixed before i posted it.  Probably no one else even noticed.    But along the way, I got modeling under my belt, texturing, and a few other tricks...now maybe one day I might actually learn how to do something "green" and make a scene!  lol

I reckon people are probably harder on my work than I am ;)

Thanks for all the participation everyone, this voting thread is closed.

The only voting not allowed is clone voting.

Thanks again.

Contact Me | Gallery | Freestuff | IMDB Credits | Personal Site
"I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now"