Planetside Software Forums

Contestants are to create a "HORIZONS" themed piece of their choosing with the highest level of Photo-realism as their goal. (Open to Artist Interpretation - Real Life, Space, Sci Fiction, Fantasy, Anything Goes)

•     The contest is open to any 3d software package

•     1 entry per contestant to be completed by a single artist (No Teams)

•     The final render must be rendered within a single application.

•     Image Size – 0.6MB Min – 10MB Max

•     Rendering layers and composing in 3rd party application(s) is permitted.

•     Approved Post-Work – Sharpening, color/level adjustments, resizing, and other subtle techniques that simulate 'typical' lens effects, ex. chromatic aberration, DOF, and lens flare. NWDA has the right to reject any image that is deemed overly 'enhanced' by Photoshop or other image editors.

•     Non-Approved Post-Work – Replacing and or adding any element via Photoshop or any image editor. All elements must be rendered within the artist's chosen application.

•     NWDA reserves the right to question any entries construction and may require the artist to submit the Gathered project before approval. NWDA will reject any entries that do not conform to the above guidelines or images that are deemed 'incomplete' by NWDA.

•     Contestants must submit judged entry with raw render output image (Composed layers into a single image, Pre-Postwork).

•     Submitted entries must be submitted by above date and time and include an Image title, Artist name, email, & judged entry with raw output image (ex. Composed layers into a single image, Pre-Postwork)
  

  ---

• 1^st Place
  
  • SideFX Houdini, 1 year indie license
  • E-On VUE Enterprise & PlantFactory, 1 year subscription
  • E-On PlantCatalog, 25 render nodes, 1 year subscription
  • Terragen 4 Professional (Transferable), or $600 voucher for upgrades, or multi-year maintenance
  • XFrog Plants Vol 1 & 2, 2900 Plants (tgo, obj, vob, & 3ds)
  • iToo Software Forest Pack & Railclone, 1 perpetual license each, plus 3 years maintenance
• 2^nd Place
  
  • SideFX Houdini, 1 year indie license
  • E-On Vue Professional, 1 Year Subscription
  • E-On PlantCatalog, 1 Year Subscription
  • Terragen 4 Professional (Transferable), or $450 voucher for upgrades, or multi-year maintenance
  • XFrog Plants Vol 1 or 2 (tgo, obj, vob, & 3ds)
  • iToo Software Forest Pack or Railclone, 1 perpetual license, plus 3 years maintenance
• 3^rd Place
  
  • SideFX Houdini, 1 year indie license
  • E-On Vue Creator or PlantCatalog, 1 year subscription
  • Terragen 4 Creative (Transferable), or $350 voucher for upgrades, or multi-year maintenance
  • XFrog Plants Vol 1 or 2 (tgo, obj, vob, & 3ds)
  • iToo Software Forest Pack or Railclone, 1 perpetual license, plus 1 year maintenance

HORIZON'S JUDGES:
Allan Mckay (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1905741/)

Greg Teegarden (http://gregteegarden.net/)
Supervisor of VFX Digital Domain (Black Adam, Terminator Dark Fate, Avengers Infinity War, Thor Ragnarok, Oblivion, X-Men First Class, TRON Legacy, The Fifth Element, Vanilla Sky) IMDb Profile (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0853811/)

Alex Jevon (https://www.artstation.com/alex_jevon/profile)
VFX Artist Britannia, The Planets, Teletubbies (Lola Post), Mars (Framestore), The Alienist (Peerless) (The Bible, Atlantis: End Of The World, Birth Of A Legend Earth's Extraordinary Journey, Exodus God and Kings) IMDB Profile (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3544694/)

I can't wait to see how people interpret this competition theme. Goodluck everyone!

That's out of the blue, interesting. I wouldn't enter for the prizes, but I might just for the fun of it.
I wish all other contestants very much artistic and technical depth! May TERRAGEN WIN! :)

Quote from: Dune on April 04, 2022, 01:50:10 AMThat's out of the blue, interesting. I wouldn't enter for the prizes, but I might just for the fun of it.
I wish all other contestants very much artistic and technical depth! May TERRAGEN WIN! :)

Wish I could enter, cause I really do want PlantFactory. Also would like maintenance for TG. This theme gives me a lot of ideas, so I hope there is a cool variety from contestants.

How do you mean, wish you could enter? You can, can't you?

Quote from: Dune on April 04, 2022, 03:32:11 AMHow do you mean, wish you could enter? You can, can't you?

Since I help desing promotional stuff, web design, etc it wouldn't be appropriate.

I don't think that is really a problem. Doing promotion and web design has nothing to do with making a photoreal render, and having it judged by the named judges. In that respect you can also exclude members of NWDA (to which I still could count myself), which once or twice was the case in the past.
I would like to see you do something spectacular  ;)

Quote from: Dune on April 04, 2022, 04:27:13 AMI don't think that is really a problem. Doing promotion and web design has nothing to do with making a photoreal render, and having it judged by the named judges. In that respect you can also exclude members of NWDA (to which I still could count myself), which once or twice was the case in the past.
I would like to see you do something spectacular  ;)

I guess you do have a logical point. I can't argue with that. I'll have to ask about that.

Quote from: Dune on April 04, 2022, 04:27:13 AMI don't think that is really a problem. Doing promotion and web design has nothing to do with making a photoreal render, and having it judged by the named judges. In that respect you can also exclude members of NWDA (to which I still could count myself), which once or twice was the case in the past.
I would like to see you do something spectacular  ;)

Correct, there is no conflict with any NWDA members entering. That includes you & me WAS ... So get to work ;D

GREAT NEWS !!! HURRAR AND HURRAY :)

Looking forward to getting into this (although as usual I seem to be somewhat overwhelmed with work at the moment).

One comment I do have is that I am disappointed with rule three.

•     The final render must be rendered within a single application.

An absolute mainstay of all professional VFX and CGI work is the ability to use different packages together in a seamless and unified way.  I would hope that competitions like this would encourage (bit in no means require) participants to use multiple packages if that is their desire if only because any practice and knowledge gained will only benefit the participants and the industry.  Also it's not a competition about which is the best software but who is the best artist.

Anyway ranty ramble asside best of luck to everyone :D

Quote from: cyphyr on April 04, 2022, 06:17:37 AMGREAT NEWS !!! HURRAR AND HURRAY :)

Looking forward to getting into this (although as usual I seem to be somewhat overwhelmed with work at the moment).

One comment I do have is that I am disappointed with rule three.

•     The final render must be rendered within a single application.

An absolute mainstay of all professional VFX and CGI work is the ability to use different packages together in a seamless and unified way.  I would hope that competitions like this would encourage (bit in no means require) participants to use multiple packages if that is their desire if only because any practice and knowledge gained will only benefit the participants and the industry.  Also it's not a competition about which is the best software but who is the best artist.

Anyway ranty ramble asside best of luck to everyone :D


Its a valid rant. This one I struggled with for the reasons you mentioned. My fear is without this rule some users will take it to far and before you know it its going to be a full on matte painting challenge. You can certainly create all your assets / effects in other software just get them into your tool of choice for the final render. Quick example: You can project pre-rendered effects on billboards and rendered them in a single piece of software. Like I mentioned I struggled with this one, to me its the only way to keep things from getting out of control. So the guideline is as is. 
Good luck guys

I guess it's time to dust off my TG license and see what happens.  Thanks for putting another contest together Danny! The prizes are outstanding as always and the theme is very open-ended. 

Quote from: zaxxon on April 04, 2022, 11:40:56 AMI guess it's time to dust off my TG license and see what happens.  Thanks for putting another contest together Danny! The prizes are outstanding as always and the theme is very open-ended.

Danny works hard on these contests. I hope we get more contestants this year.

So do I. Already working on something 8) :-X

Cool!!!! :)

_{Absolutely no idea so far...}

present!

is there gonna be a forum where we can see each other work in progress?

If everybody participating (and daring enough to share WIPS ;)  ) just titles it HORIZONS, it will be quite clear, I'd say.

Quote from: Nala1977 on April 05, 2022, 11:21:01 AMpresent!

is there gonna be a forum where we can see each other work in progress?

I have messaged the powers that be, waiting on a response. Hopefully they will, I don't see why not. Though I imagine it may be a little annoying to make the forum and make sure the permissions are right across user groups.

Quote from: DannyG on April 04, 2022, 06:08:08 AM

QuoteI don't think that is really a problem. Doing promotion and web design has nothing to do with making a photoreal render, and having it judged by the named judges. In that respect you can also exclude members of NWDA (to which I still could count myself), which once or twice was the case in the past.
I would like to see you do something spectacular  ;)

Hey WAS - Go for it! :)

Quote from: cyphyr on April 04, 2022, 06:17:37 AMGREAT NEWS !!! HURRAR AND HURRAY :)

Looking forward to getting into this (although as usual I seem to be somewhat overwhelmed with work at the moment).

One comment I do have is that I am disappointed with rule three.

•     The final render must be rendered within a single application.

An absolute mainstay of all professional VFX and CGI work is the ability to use different packages together in a seamless and unified way.  I would hope that competitions like this would encourage (bit in no means require) participants to use multiple packages if that is their desire if only because any practice and knowledge gained will only benefit the participants and the industry.  Also it's not a competition about which is the best software but who is the best artist.

Anyway ranty ramble asside best of luck to everyone :D

The way I read it is you can use other software eg blender etc to create assets etc, but they must be imported into your software of choice for rendering, eg terragen, and then the final image rendered from there. you can then render different passes and composition them in a third party application.

Or have I got that wrong?

I think, this is the way it is. Quoting Danny:

"You can certainly create all your assets / effects in other software just get them into your tool of choice for the final render."

"Rendering layers and composing in 3rd party application(s) is permitted."

Hopefully there will be a good number of entrants creating work with many different software platforms, the prizes certainly warrant a good turnout!  While TG has dominated in several of the NWDA contests, the competition could be more challenging with this one. Here's a promotion that appears over at our friendly rival E-on:  https://info.e-onsoftware.com/blog/expand-your-creativity-with-the-nwda-horizons-challenge

Note the winning images of the past NWDA contest in that E-on promo...😉

It was awesome of Daniel to write up that article. Helped a lot with traffic and exposure.

Quote from: zaxxon on April 15, 2022, 12:45:26 PMHopefully there will be a good number of entrants creating work with many different software platforms, the prizes certainly warrant a good turnout!  While TG has dominated in several of the NWDA contests, the competition could be more challenging with this one. Here's a promotion that appears over at our friendly rival E-on:  https://info.e-onsoftware.com/blog/expand-your-creativity-with-the-nwda-horizons-challenge

Note the winning images of the past NWDA contest in that E-on promo...😉


Promotion for a contest that promotes their Software .....  what a concept !

Oooh, weee... Long time no see and the first thing I see is the new contest...

Not sure if I'll be able to join but it's nice to see that this initiative is not dead yet. :)

Quote from: N-drju on April 19, 2022, 05:28:01 AMOooh, weee... Long time no see and the first thing I see is the new contest...

Not sure if I'll be able to join but it's nice to see that this initiative is not dead yet. :)

Yes N-drju we're still here supporting the TG Community, That's never going to change. Hopefully you have some time to get an entry together

Again packed with fantastic prices! Thanks for that.
Now I hope that the Theme Challenge does not stop at what the advertising picture suggests and there will be entries which are not "horizons" "only".

Here is what the dictonary of Ethymologie says:

horizon (n.)
late 14c., orisoun, from Old French orizon (14c., Modern French horizon), earlier orizonte (13c.), from Latin horizontem (nominative horizon), from Greek horizon (kyklos) "bounding (circle)," from horizein "bound, limit, divide, separate," from horos "boundary, landmark, marking stones." The h- was restored in English 17c. in imitation of Latin. Old English used eaggemearc ("eye-mark") for "limit of view, horizon." The apparent horizon is distinguished from the celestial or astronomical horizon.

As Zaxxon wrote in another thread, there is more to it in a figurative sense ;)

CHeers, Klaus

Klaus, Here are some reference photos I started collecting. This is the best way to explain the Theme. BTW There are no boundaries here as you can see "Open to Artist interpretation"
https://www.pinterest.com/NwdaGroup/horizons-inspiration/ (https://www.pinterest.com/NwdaGroup/horizons-inspiration/)

Thanks Danny, I`ll have a look.

CHeers, Klaus

Right it could even be totally different. Like I mentioned in the description on the challenge page, it could just be the next big chapter of life, and that is open for interpretation itself. Someone in a journey, going for that next big job, having a baby, who knows. 

Indeed, so the entries should be rich in variety. Should be! Very curious.

Less than 30 days to finish up any entries Guys and Gals. I hope to see more Terragen entries! Good Luck

I hope so too, but it's ominously quiet here :(

Perhaps everybody is heads down in creating the final image entry... :o

CHeers, Klaus

Haha, or trying to decide if I really actually want to render yet another "final" image.

@DannyG 
Tried to upload my entry through "Submissions" section on NWDA web site but that link has  been timing out for the last few days.  Finally sent it as attachment via the "contact us" link.

This is my fault. nwdachallenge domain is down, and IONOS pulled some shady stuff to keep the domain even though we were within the timeframe they told us, and the emails they said contradict that, never existed. Lol

Anyways, you can access the submission directly at https://nwdagroup.com/contest-submission/

Got it! Thanks WAS! :)

Only just over 5 hours until the deadline for Horizons! I hope you have your entries in! And good luck!

When will they announce the outcome?

I just submitted (tried to at least) my picture.
Hope, I was in time....

CHeers, Klaus

Quote from: Doug on July 03, 2022, 10:15:15 PMWhen will they announce the outcome?

Don't quote me on it, but I believe we give the judges a week or two, to go over the entries and submit their results. They are usually pretty prompt at going over them from what I remember. 

Just checking in to see if all of our winners successfully collected their prizes from our sponsors. If not, please email me horizons@nwdagroup.com (horizons@nwdagroup.com)

Thks NWDA