NWDA's 2018 Theme Challenge Participation Poll

Started by DannyG, November 28, 2017, 04:20:37 PM

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Would you be interested in participating in NWDA's 2018 Theme Challenge "Cliffs"?

I am Definitely Interested .. When can We Start
19 (52.8%)
I am interested, but I am not 100% certain I have the time
13 (36.1%)
I am interested, but I am not happy with the Theme
2 (5.6%)
Thank you, but I am not interested
2 (5.6%)

Total Members Voted: 36

Voting closed: December 31, 2017, 07:31:45 PM

Hetzen

I don't think the prizes really matter. It's great to get set a challenge.

Dune

There are 25 entrants as of today (if everybody really enters), very little indeed. Maybe they all hangout on facebook and they can't find our forum, or they're too pro (or too chicken  :P) to enter. Perhaps the prizes will lure them, once these are settled. Not everybody may be interested, but some can use it.

Quite a few won't show there WIP's anyway.

DannyG

#32
Believe me Ulco I blanket all Social Media, they all know about it. Per the Polling we only have 15 confirmations. It is optimistic to think the other pollers are confirmations, unfortunately using the previous poll challenge data, thats just not the case. Hopefully things pick up
New World Digital Art
NwdaGroup.com
Media: facebook|Twitter|Instagram

Hetzen

Maybe the format is wrong. Maybe there's an end of year best of gallery prizes you guys give out?

Perhaps during the year there's a few challenges set, or you announce that you're going to give a prize for the best cliff face at the end of the year for example. That will free everyone from time constraints, and people will see their work in the gallery.

Dune

QuoteI blanket all Social Media
I would have thought so.

AndyWelder

@ Danny:
QuoteThere are 25 entrants as of today (if everybody really enters), very little indeed.
If multiple entries per entrant would be allowed at least there would be more entries... :D This is not entirely joking because right now I have at least one render that I think is fit to enter with but there are still a couple more swirling around in my head.  :-\ And posting WIP's would leave part of the decision making right there in the forum, at least for me.
"Ik rotzooi maar wat aan" Karel Appel

bobbystahr

Quote from: Hetzen on December 07, 2017, 10:24:18 AM
Maybe the format is wrong. Maybe there's an end of year best of gallery prizes you guys give out?

Perhaps during the year there's a few challenges set, or you announce that you're going to give a prize for the best cliff face at the end of the year for example. That will free everyone from time constraints, and people will see their work in the gallery.

Indeed, time constraints are often the breaking point for folks who unlike myself have to still go to work every day and it's often hard to find the time in a 'limited time' comp.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

zaxxon

The theme is a potentially rich opportunity to create some spectacular images. Note the Wiki descriptions and examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff

On a realistic note: perhaps the number of possible participants so far is close to what it will be in the end. I can understand that without a larger number, the contest effort on NWDA's part, both in time and energy expended to gather some great prizes (thank you Danny!) might seem to be too much. These types of contests run fairly often on other forums, and in my estimation (non-scientific of course) the number of participants is a small (small) fraction of the forum's overall viewer base. So the number here would probably be proportionate. Additionally, a fair number of folks here use the free version of TG (my guess). I would think that they self-eliminate, feeling that a lack of TG features would be an obvious disadvantage. One could make the argument that having WIP's would be beneficial to the users of the free versions, both from an educational angle as well as possibly motivating the purchase of an upgrade.

At any rate, thanks again Danny for proposing this possible challenge. You've pulled it off in the past, and I believe you can do it again!


otakar

Ok, you asked for thoughts. My first thought is that although we all welcome a growing user base, I speculate that it is not growing at a very fast pace, at least when it comes to hobbyists and freelancers. Not everyone participates on this forum of course, but I do not see a dramatic uptick in activity as compared to, say, 18 months ago. I think there are still fairly high barriers that new users encounter, especially if they have no previous experience with like tools. A lack of easy to find and easy to digest guides/tutorials is still the reality after all these years.

But alright, maybe you are hoping to just grab a bigger slice of the known, active user base than in previous contests. Perhaps the motivation is not ultimately the prospect of a prize (as nice as it might be), but rather just having a common goal and the road to achieve it and show off your ideas and in the whole process learn from others? So here's an idea: how about showcasing a different entrant every week or so? Have a little writeup (can be standard questions that the contestant answers), show some of his/her previous renders (even photos) if any, something like that. Then you'd need to have a committed list first, of course. I'd be interested to hear from other people here, their backgrounds, interests, how they came to Terragen, etc.

Seth

I am not in favor of WIP during the contest.
Some people might feel "scared" by some users right at the beginnning of the contest just by viewing the wip of some works.
Then, I'd rather see where people are going with their own mind, imagination, technique and heart, not just apply what this "artist" or this "artist" told them to do to "improve" that part of the other.
I understand the joy of sharing and seeing the evolution of a render over the time like in the pic sharing section of the forums, but we are talking of a contest here, with quite big prizes, so it is not just an unformal thing.
I am waiting to be surprised by people, to feel chills down the spines thinking how good people are, how imaginative and clever they can be.
This is not only a technical contest, but a Terragen contest. Some of us are more technicians, others are more "artists". Some are hobbyists and others are pros.
I don't want people to fear to participate by watching the evolutions of a few renders, getting scared because they would feel they can't do better.
Everybody can do better than anybody, if they put their heart (and their art) into the contest.

And if people want that WIP section so badly because they like to see the evolutions of a render thorugh time, well I suggest that, after the contest we open few threads with contestants and they could post WIP of their renders and explain to everybody how they worked their way up to their final image, winner or not winner it won't matter to be honest.
We will just have all the benefit of the evolution, the explaination, etc... but without the problem that a WIP section might bring during a contest (people just applying techniques, people surrendering because scared, people leeching ideas, etc...)

Here are my ideas about the WIP section and why I am opposed to it.

Cheers,
Seth.

Luc

Hi guys

I am also against showing work in progress during this challenge. Last time I had impression to already know the winner before the verdict !

luc
Terragen scenes & presets store
www.lucbianco.fr
Unreal Authorized Instructor

Oshyan

I think there are reasonable arguments on both sides of this debate, but I don't think there can be a clear winner. I was originally pretty strongly in favor of WIPs, even as I read through this thread, but the more I thought about it the more I realized both sides are mostly just speculating or trying to draw conclusions from the available experiences, but without really knowing if that conclusion is correct. So what I realized is that both need to be *tested* to know for sure, otherwise it's still just speculation. We have already done a contest with WIP threads and I felt it was reasonably successful but not as popular as might be desired. So perhaps now is the time to test without WIPs.

I also want to point out that there are very strong and successful examples that follow both approaches.

On CGSociety, Artstation, and others they run contests where the WIP threads are almost more important than the final work (and the WIP thread is mandatory in several of these challenges), and can sometimes run into the 10s of pages of forum discussion on a single entry as it evolves. The artists participating get a boost of support and feedback (from non-judges), and there is potential inspiration for other artists. There is also, potentially, intimidation, of course. But I would argue that if people are going to be intimidated by the quality of work that is going to be in the contest, they already know what they are up against, and one might even say their imagination could do as good or better a job intimidating them than real WIPs. ;)

On the flipside many software companies run quite popular challenges where entries are not shown until the contest is over, most recently including E-On who had over 100 entries for their big annual contest. I don't know of WIP threads for some of those entries may have happened on forums I don't frequent, but I know it was not a requirement, at the least.

In any case the Terragen community and the official forums here have their own characteristics and the only way to know for sure is to test.

P.S. You might consider running a similar poll on the Facebook group(s).

- Oshyan

agent unawares

I think contests, a lot of the time, tend to draw people who want to show off how good they are more than people who are interested in the prizes. Let's say the first prize really is 6 grand. I disagree with that, it seems to be the "nothing ever goes on sale and you make use of everything " price, but we'll say it's 6 grand. If twenty people enter the contest, even if we all have even odds of winning, my expected value across infinite worlds is around $300 (it's a little more counting there are lesser prizes). How long do I spend making this image? And if I know I'm not exceptional, then that expected payoff, the value for my time, drops dramatically.

So I think a lot of the time contests tend to be about pride, competition, and the idea of a challenge. This isn't a bad thing, but it's a hard thing to overcome, especially to draw in people who are still learning.

paq

#43
Hello,

I think that the quality of the wip thread is as important as the final image, and should be taken in consideration when you choose the winners.
Showing progress and sharing techniques will benefit to the whole community ... just showing 3 nice pictures at the end of a contest helps no one.
And there is no reason to not accept hidden entries for shinny people. (I'm not really sold on the intimidation argument).

If you are looking for more quantity, maybe the third (or fourth) prize can be a lottery, so anyone as a chance to win something.

Finally open the rules a little bit might help too, something like "use any tools you want to create the image, best usage of Terragen will be of course appreciated".
Because I think there must be a bunch of artists that are using Terragen in their pipeline, but only a fraction of them are using Terragen exclusively. Just a guess of course (and speaking a bit for myself  8)).
Gameloft

Seth

Quote from: paq on December 08, 2017, 12:25:14 AM


I think that the quality of the wip thread is as important as the final image, and should be taken in consideration when you choose the winners.



No.
Only the definitive should and will be judged.
You don't judge the 100m in the Olympics by looking at how the runner improved during his training but by how fast he actually runs.
In my opinion.