Inter-Brand Contest Idea

[Mohawk20]

I just got the Cornucopia 3D newsletter, about contests and winners, and great artists, all about Vue.
I had a look at those contest winners and I couldn't hold back a little smile.
The work we show here as a 'Simple - definitely not finished - WIP' is way more realistic than those contest winners.

So that got me thinking...
After the current contest with the LOTR theme is finished, we could maybe set up a contest between us and the Vue users over at Cornucopia.
It would be focused on realism, and still shots or mattes. And both forums select 5 entries as their best, and all 5 are compared against the other 5 to see which program (and which user group) can produce the most realistic images.
You could see it as a sort of publicity stunt...
There would be a general theme, like 'Mountain range' or 'Cloudscape' or 'Lakeshore' or something like that.

And a total period of 2 to 3 months should be reasonable...


It's just an idea, but do you think it could work?

[Tangled-Universe]

It would certainly be a publicity stunt, but I really have no idea about the viability of such an idea.

[rcallicotte]

I'm of the opinion that all of this is so subjective that what one thinks another may not grasp.  Nevertheless, having a clear objective to do this could make for an interesting time for everyone...without malice, of course.

[old_blaggard]

I think that this is a great idea, as long as it's done in the spirit of friendly competition . It would be interesting to see how the people over there and the power houses that we have here compare. It wouldn't even have to be a realism contest - just have people make the best overall artwork that they can, and then showcase the galleries side by side.

[Seth]

hehe !

and after the "contest", Terragen's people will say "Hey ! TG2 rocks !!! look at their crappy renders !!!" and the Vue people will say "Vue is definitely better than TG2 and so easy to use !!! look at our vegetation and our models !!!"

but that's definitely a good idea ^^

[jo]

Hi,

I think people appreciate the output from different apps in different ways, and that's fine. Often people enjoy the tools and user experience of a particular app and this is more important to them than the output. A competition like this could be started in a spirit of friendliness, but I would be concerned it wouldn't end with one.

Regards,

Jo

[Jack]

i don't think this will be a good idea since terragen 2 and vue are so different
and not everyone wants to go for realism.
personally i find a render of a rock done in terragen 2 very boring but it is very realistic.
but then i see a picture made in vue with a giant fantasy castle among the clouds which isnt realistic atall to be breath taking ,so how can you compare these two appz since they are used so differently

also why set these apps head to head from my experiences terragen 2 and vue in particular vue 7 work hand in hand.

[Mohawk20]

The reason I wanted to put them head to head in realism is because Vue is used by most of the major movie companies (who go for realism).
The idea was to show how TG2 would keep up against vue, so maybe some heads would turn our way.

But I already considered the negative sides, and I know it's probably not a very good idea, but it's still a nice discussion topic 

[cyphyr]

I tend towards it not being such a good idea. As Jo says it may well start with a good spirit but experience has shown it is unlikely to end that way. Were also heavily disadvantaged with having such a small user base compared to the millions of copies Vue has sold. Fanboy competitions, "my app is better than yours", will always be crippled from the outset in that it will be next to impossible to judge the output fairly. What would be cool (IMHO), would be a series of events (not even competitions really) in which Terragen is integrated with different apps. Terragen and Vue used seamlessly together for example or how to use terragen together with real world footage, there's plenty of other options.
Just my 2 grotes worth
richard

[kleinm]

 i would be interested in a "quasi" benchmark using the same substructures
and at a given theme (restrained to certain parameters or picture of a real
scenery).

not only could the user compare but also experience the different
procedures in scene generation of different terra-softs or plugins...

Bound to 3ds max for the last decade i was forced to look for solutions of realistic
terraingeneration (max-ex & internal) and found nothing near to tg2 so far.
it would be nice to see the same scene done in tg2, max, xsi, vue ect. and compare the
output.

[Mr_Lamppost]

Sounds like an interesting idea but I agree that it would probably end in tears. 

[Seth]

it would be nice to see the same scene done in tg2, max, xsi, vue ect. and compare the
output.

how can you do the same scene on so different softwares ? Oo
sorry to ask but i was just wandering...

[PorcupineFloyd]

I'd rather focus on publishing our (TG2) works wider in public instead of doing competition "app A vs app B" as it will become ugly in effect. You know, all this flame warzone and other "fighting with apps against apps" is kinda stupid. I think what we do really need is to become visible.

Vue is extremely marketed. A few days ago I had a comment to one of my Canada series picture on Deviant Art asking if the picture was made in Vue. It was made entirely in Terragen 2 and it was stated so in artist's comments. I responded that I've used Terragen 2, and I got answered that he didn't know there was a software like that.

I know that Planetside ain't e-on software and that it doesn't have millions of dollars for marketing purposes, but then Terragen 2 is really cheap while being totally powerful. And it has a small community of talented people. As Mohawk stated - we have WIPs looking similar to what Cornucopia considered to be a top grade art. Why not try to publish our work wider or perhaps co-operate with Xfrog? How about Xfrog making a contest of "the best use of our vegetation models"? e-zines?

Or from bottom level - how about adding "Terragen 2" next to the artist name? Many of us do sign their work, but not everyone includes an information about software (including me). It may be useful. I tend to publish my pictures with Creative Commons and it means that I can someday find my picture on some server in other galaxy - with or without the information, but someone will definitely see it.

Just my quick thoughts.

[rcallicotte]

Hey!!!    Good idea...

How about Xfrog making a contest of "the best use of our vegetation models"? e-zines?

[Oshyan]

The reason I wanted to put them head to head in realism is because Vue is used by most of the major movie companies (who go for realism).
The idea was to show how TG2 would keep up against vue, so maybe some heads would turn our way.

But I already considered the negative sides, and I know it's probably not a very good idea, but it's still a nice discussion topic 

You might be surprised at the number of studios that are using TG2 already. Vue basically has a single major endorsement, and because of the fact that it's ILM, people pay a lot of attention and you see it in some major productions (Pirates, Indiana Jones). The studios that use TG2 are smaller, but they seem quite devoted to TG2, despite the availability of Vue and other options. Hopefully in the future we can show more details of these projects like E-On has done.

We have also been holding off on major marketing efforts until TG2 is finalized. We will be doing a bit more once we reach that stage.

- Oshyan