Mars 3D

[TheBadger]

Participants are allowed to promote discussion of thier render in order to keep it in circulation by dissenting from commentors on any website you post a TG render to. Or on any forum that re-posts your render.

For example.
Commenter "A" says something like, "I like the composition, but you should have used a different apature/Fstop/lens/" and then makes a suggestion as to what would be better. THe contest participants may respond in a way that provokes continued discussion, but must lead the discussion back to the image. For example, a good responce to the above statement would be something like, "Yeah, thats a good idea. But don't you just love the subject/location?" And, "wouldn't you wan't to go there for vacation?"
Thus the fool is confirmed and the contest participant may earn an additional two points each time. and 1 more point for each time the original commentator again refers to the render as a photo.

revealing a successful render is only allowed in the TG community. All other reveals disqualify the participant.

Fooling any other CG community is 20 points. For example, posting a render as a source photo, and then another render as the "work" you were inspired to make from the photo; that is, your TG render.

[Dune]

I don't think you can get these people to actually discuss 'just a photo' because it looks kind of special. There are real photo's around that you can hardly believe, and like discussed before in other threads, they would easily be considered CG, and commented upon as such.
It's a great idea, though, but very hard to make something that 1; looks like a photo (unless blurry and from a distance), and 2; is so strange that it's drawing attention. And then; who believes photo's? Everything can be modded believably (PS).

If you guys do take this further, I'll participate nonetheless 

[TheBadger]

^^Thats funny Ulco. Because I always considered the high point of this art to be recreating crappy photos shot by tourists on vacation. Blurry, out of focus, wrong exposure, lack of composition, balance, purpose, reason, so on so forth. Like how Picasso could paint like the masters but decided he would rather to paint disfigured hookers... sort of.

To take all this tech, all the knowledge, all the skill and time, and everything else, and make a video like it was shot on a cell phone in a park by a sales clerk on lunch break... Now this is super realism taken to the only possible conclusion, this is socially relevant commentary 

Remember that DandelO just posted that video of the moon conspiracy stuff. It was good. But if he had taken his Lulz more seriously, he could have incited protests, congressional inquiries, public apologies... There is just so many possibilities when you convince internet weirdos that they know something no one else does. And then mix in politics and ratings.

But bla bla bla, my guess is that the big winner of this contest will be someone who does something very simple and clever, and just aims it very smartly at a the right crowed at the right time in the right way. No congressional inquiry necessary.

Remember, its not necessary to fool all the people all the time, just one asshole, once. And if that guy happens to have a TV show, well... Isn't that how politics works? I know the media puts on a show every 4 years here using the same tactics.

UFOs, Sasquatch, things like this could be fun. But like I said, the winner will more than likely be someone who comes up with something very simple. Something once we see it, we will all just know its perfect.

Here is something kinda crazy. Not quite UFOs and Sasquatch, but a lot of people were believing it at the time. Made the news... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE0Q904gtMI
There were technical mistakes that prove its a fake. But most people dont have a understanding whatsoever of digital forensics. But really, a thing is only absurd until you see it with your own eyes. And in the end, people want to believe.

By the way, didn't someone from this community do a render of an eclipse that got picked up as a real photo and redistributed as such? Everyone was saying WOW! What a great photo. No one thought about photoshop. And thats because most people know that most PS work out there is crap. I have seen a lot of great matt paintings made in PS. Only a few fooled me. But they fooled me pretty good. I questioned a lot I saw in the images, but I had thought the landscapes were real. Turned out the landscapes were the only "fake" part in the images.
My point is that everyone knows about PS, and lots know how to use it. And they can still be fooled. Everyone can. And thats kinda the point too.

How about that prank video DG posted a few weeks ago. The one where the team played a trick and made coffee drinkers think a girl had psychic powers? People believe what they see as long as you let them. They want it. Its just easier that way. People would rather believe the world is ending (2012) then face that they cant eve trust them selves.

Lastly,
If the world says reality is what we say it is, that man is only what he says he is, and that he can say whatever he wants. THen isn't this "contest" a comment on that? And is that not high art?

Its up to the contest participants to decide for them selves how deeply they want to probe the orifice of these questions. As for me, Im limited by my abilities with the soft But I have no doubt there are more than a few around here who could make this worth watching.

[dandelO]

The hardest thing to achieve here, I think, is to make your render appear as if shot from a camera. To take the 'perfectness' out of any 3d work is a skill and a talent in itself. A 'holiday snap' will have lens distortions, chromatic abberation, blurs, dust and scratches, flares, among any other 'defects', that a raw render will never match. Of course, you can build many of these things into a render in most 3d packages but making a cheap looking snapshot is very difficult, your renderer wants to draw everything perfectly.
For the recent NASA Moon animation shots I made(not the stills), I only used a render detail in TG of 0.25, I didn't want perfect detail for obvious reasons. Further ageing of the 'film' including focus, shake, scratches etc. were all done post-render. Motion blur was TG.
The Apollo 20 film is still live, btw. And hasn't yet been outed as a 3D render, except by me in a generic Youtube-type comment, it only takes the right set of eyes to happen on it and any video can go viral. I don't consider that a finished project, more an experiment still in progress.
I love the idea of tricking the masses but I think that making it a contest/point scoring activity would ultimately be a very complexed thing to manage, I more think that, for every piece you create should be built from Point A to Point Z with this goal in mind. Unless, of course, the point isn't photo realism.

[Oshyan]

To clarify, I wasn't suggesting a "pull one over on the news/broader Internet" type of contest. My "fake or photo" idea was more of a specific website where people could voluntarily challenge themselves, similar to an ongoing marketing campaign Autodesk has been quietly running for the past 10+ years: http://area.autodesk.com/fakeorfoto/

I'll leave it to you guys to organize and participate in crazy public stunts.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

snag·le: A snag that is happing by means of a non-existing problem with real or imagined consequences.

Can someone help? I seem to have snagled an existential problem.

foo·g : A digital poo that has happened or is happing now, or which may never have happened at all.

Ah man! I just stepped in a big pile of foog.

foog-snagle The act of being stuck in, or on, or by a foog, in the non-physical universe.

Ah shit man! Iv been foogsnagled.

Foogsnagle 2014 A contest of immense proportions, and even smaller dimensions. Coming soon.



I dont know guys. Either this is very funny or very stupid... Or maybe both. Then again, perhaps not one or the other. At any rate I say we do this.

We can figure out the rules soon enough.

[TheBadger]

Oshyan, your less aggressive way is good too. And Of course I would not want to suggest anyone going the path Im rooting for, needs to be as mean spirited as my previous posts  may have encouraged. But doesn't the clandestine effort sound like a bit more fun? 

DandelO, I do agree.
Let us say then, that finished work need not be pure TG. That is, once a render is made, the render may be put through any and all beneficial post processes. So long as the work is based on a TG render.
And your right, a point system if nothing else would be too much work to keep track of. So lets think of something like a category system. For example, landscape and still life. But also pure render, post, and composite and so on.
And categories in judging success too. 

Multiple winners allowed. So rather then a winner takes all, more like a merit badge for all who achieve. A kind of running challenge.
Because really, shoulden't we all be able to do this at least once (fool people with our renders) even if realism is not our goal in life? Like I brought up before, the "great" artists in the modern age, could all paint like the old masters berfore they started painting like mental patients ...nothing against the mentally ill. Heaven knows I could use a prescription about now.

So?