Planetside Software Forums

CONTEST RULES & GUIDELINES:


Contestants are to create a "Travelers" themed piece of their choosing with the highest level of Photo-realism as their goal. (Open to Interpretation – Real Life, Sci/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 – 8MB 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)

1st Place

    Houdini Side - FX, Indie License
    Vue Enterprise & Plant Factory, 1 Year Subscription
    E-ON Plant Catalog, 25 Render nodes, 1 Year Subscription
    Terragen 4 Professional or $700 voucher for annual maintenance fees
    QuadSpinner Gaea, Professional (Perpetual License)
    Substance Designer, Painter, Alchemist & Source w/ 30 Mats per month, 1-year Indie License
    Quixel Megascan's 1 Year Personal Subscription - 500 Points
    XFrog Plants Vol 1 & 2, 2900 Plants (tgo, obj, vob, & 3ds)

2nd Place

    Houdini Side FX, Indie License
    Vue Professional & Plant Factory, 1 Year Subscription
    Terragen 4 Professional or $500 voucher for annual maintenance fees
    QuadSpinner Gaea Professional (Perpetual License)
    Substance Designer, Painter, Alchemist & Source w/ 30 Mats per month, 1-year Indie License
    Quixel Megascan's 6 Month Personal Subscription - 250 Points
    XFrog Plants Vol 1 & 2, 2900 Plants (tgo, obj, vob, & 3ds)

3rd Place

    Houdini Side FX, Indie License
    Vue Creator or E-ON Plant Catalog, 1 Year Subscription
    Terragen 4 Creative or $350 voucher for annual maintenance fees
    QuadSpinner Gaea Professional (Perpetual License)
    Substance Designer, Painter, Alchemist & Source w/ 30 Mats per month, 1-year Indie License
    Quixel Megascan's 6 Month Personal - 250 Points
    XFrog Plants Winner Choice - Vol 1 'or' 2 (tgo, obj, vob, & 3ds)

Travelers JUDGES:

  Allan Mckay

    Award-winning VFX Supervisor, Owner Catastrophic FX, VFX Artist Industrial Light + Magic, Blur, Prime Focus, Pixomondo (Bloodshot, The Equalizer, Star Trek Into The Darkness, Transformers Dark Side Of The Moon, 2012, Superman Returns) IMDb Profile (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1905741/)
 
    Greg Teegarden

    Supervisor of VFX Digital Domain (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

    VFX Artist Britannia, The Planets, Teletubbies (Lola Post), Mars (Framestore), The Alienist (Peerless)  IMDb Profile (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3544694/)

This theme has me playing with a lot of different concepts. Trouble deciding what WIP to focus on.

It's really wide open, so a very difficult thing to judge I'd say. I have a few ideas, but they tumble over eachother.

I also thought about assets permitted, and would like a bit of clarification. It would of course be pretty easy to use a lot of purchased high quality photogrammetry assets, or even projecting a crisp photo on a simple background (say rock wall) - which would be quite the same - add some travelers, and get a really nice photo-realistic render. But in essence it is a photo.

Quote from: Dune on May 13, 2020, 02:13:17 AM...projecting a crisp photo on a simple background (say rock wall) - which would be quite the same - add some travelers, and get a really nice photo-realistic render. But in essence it is a photo.

I think that would be rejected on account of not being rendered in a single application. ;) And of course such techniques don't seem to be fair. I plan to add some objects but made from scratch by myself. Maybe not Pixar-grade. But 100% mine.

Projecting a photo on an object would be like those painting books - all you have to do is to use crayons, but does it mean that the pattern itself is your "work"?

Well, any treebark texture is of course a photo, but a TG render of a forest considered as a pure TG render, but I'm just saying that there's a vague line between (mostly) procedural and mostly photo.

The question of "how much is too much" as they say! ;)

Sorta just falls under "effort". Lol I'm sure the judges, like many others, will be able to tell such low-effort entries. It's like dropping a low-res hegithfield into TG and populating it. Meh. Cool bro. Lol

Quote from: Dune on May 13, 2020, 02:13:17 AMIt's really wide open, so a very difficult thing to judge I'd say. I have a few ideas, but they tumble over eachother.

I also thought about assets permitted, and would like a bit of clarification. It would of course be pretty easy to use a lot of purchased high quality photogrammetry assets, or even projecting a crisp photo on a simple background (say rock wall) - which would be quite the same - add some travelers, and get a really nice photo-realistic render. But in essence it is a photo.

He gents,

  With the exception of "Cliff" all previous NWDA challenges allowed the third party created and or purchased assets. TRAVELER'S guidelines are parallel with modern production workflows. Again anything goes as far as asset creation and or sources. The only restriction is the Final render must be rendered within a single application. I hope that clears things up. Good Luck guys !!

Is a subtle denoising allowed?

Quote from: Hannes on May 22, 2020, 12:16:04 PMIs a subtle denoising allowed?

Hannes,
   Approved postwork is per the above guidelines.

I am there with my surreal works ;)

"A mountain justified by Luis Trenker and a floating traveler"


... Lonely is the traveler, who hovers restlessly from summit to summit
 his knowledge weighs heavily on the things that most remain hidden ...

Hi there,

2 questions:

a) are self-generated HDRI maps allowed (like in TG)?
b) are self-captured and processed photogrammetry assets allowed?

Best regards

Quote from: amandas on June 10, 2020, 10:32:06 AMa) are self-generated HDRI maps allowed (like in TG)?
b) are self-captured and processed photogrammetry assets allowed?

a) Not sure if you need HDRI in Terragen because...
One - there is no place to "load" them into the scene as far as I can tell.
Two - normally you just use the sun, clouds, atmosphere - lighting model in TG is physically accurate. ;)

b) Yes. As long as it is not a part of a post-production effort but an asset within the scene.

Okay, there is something I really don't understand...

The requirement is to submit a pre-postwork image. A raw render output. Yet, the submission page clearly shows two dialogue boxes - one for a pre-postwork image. The other for a postwork image.

How shall I interpret the submission page then when confronted to the contest rules?

The reason I ask is that I don't really see much of a "postwork potential" for my image judging from the test renders. The only postwork that I plan for is my signature.

Which brings me to the next question which, I'm afraid, has not been properly answered yet; is it okay to put a signature onto a finished (raw output) image?

Any help is much appreciated. ;)

Quote from: amandas on June 10, 2020, 10:32:06 AMHi there,

2 questions:

a) are self-generated HDRI maps allowed (like in TG)?
b) are self-captured and processed photogrammetry assets allowed?

Best regards

a) Yes
b) Yes

Good luck

Quote from: N-drju on June 13, 2020, 07:23:14 AMOkay, there is something I really don't understand...

The requirement is to submit a pre-postwork image. A raw render output. Yet, the submission page clearly shows two dialogue boxes - one for a pre-postwork image. The other for a postwork image.

How shall I interpret the submission page then when confronted to the contest rules?

The reason I ask is that I don't really see much of a "postwork potential" for my image judging from the test renders. The only postwork that I plan for is my signature.

Which brings me to the next question which, I'm afraid, has not been properly answered yet; is it okay to put a signature onto a finished (raw output) image?

Any help is much appreciated. ;)

As with all NWDA challenges in the past, Contestants must submit an image "Pre-post work" and an image to be judged that would include postwork (if any) If you are not using any post-work you are still required to submit 2 images per the submission forum that is extremely straight forward. As far as signatures as with all previous challenges they are allowed.

Good luck

Ok, thanks. This is my first entry ever, hence the confusion.

I take it that the raw render should be a directly converted .jpg instead of a 44MB 32-bit .exr?

Thank you guys for feedback, good luck to all participants!

Quote from: Dune on June 15, 2020, 08:03:07 AMI take it that the raw render should be a directly converted .jpg instead of a 44MB 32-bit .exr?

There is a limit of 8mb in size as one of the requirements, so I guess it's down to .tiff.

I just wonder... is it possible to somehow predict the size of the final output? The TG output I mean. Not the graphics editor resave.

Quote from: Dune on June 15, 2020, 08:03:07 AMI take it that the raw render should be a directly converted .jpg instead of a 44MB 32-bit .exr?

I'm wondering the same thing

Maybe this was answered somewhere else and I didn't see it.

Contest rules state that final image size is 8GB maximum.  Or are we allowed to convert the raw rendered image to PNG format and then submit the PNG image as out entry?

Since it is targeted at the web, I take it the output format should be as small as possible, probably .jpg being the best option.

Do we get a confirmation e-mail, after we sent our entry? It said something like "it has been sent", but just to be sure...

...like you check, if the door is really locked, after you have already checked it five times... ;)

I sent out a couple of them today Hannes. You were one of them

Cool! Thanks, Danny.

Contestants are live on the contest page: https://nwdachallenge.com/

Cool! Some really nice stuff so far. Though I don't see any travelers in entry 2... or do I miss something?

Is .tiff file the same as .tif file?

The reason I ask is that I have no other option but to render my final work in four crops. When saving composited crops without changing the file format, I get that extra "F" which makes me worried...

It all comes down to one question which is - what do we understand by "raw render output image"? A native TG extension? Or an unaltered image in whatever format?

Sorry for my first-timer ignorance. :( I just don't want my work rejected because of such a detail...

http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/protocols-formats/difference-between-tif-and-tiff/

I mostly save as 32-bit exr, and/or 16-bit tif. So I opened the tgout, put my name on it and saved as jpg. The one manually saved was a bit adjusted (it needed very little), put a name on and saved as jpg as well. Sent both in, and didn't get a mail by Danny saying they were rejected, so...
I had to anyway, because the tif and exr were around 40MB. Even saving as png in good quality gave a file over 8MB, so max jpg was the way to go.
So I wouldn't worry too much, as far as you don't 'fiddle' with it.

Quote from: Dune on June 24, 2020, 01:07:20 AMSo I opened the tgout, put my name on it and saved as jpg. The one manually saved was a bit adjusted (it needed very little), put a name on and saved as jpg as well. Sent both in, and didn't get a mail by Danny saying they were rejected, so...
I had to anyway, because the tif and exr were around 40MB. Even saving as png in good quality gave a file over 8MB, so max jpg was the way to go.

Thanks Ulco. This is quite reassuring. I hope you guys don't mind me asking all these basic questions.

And yes - PNGs offer really good quality, but, quite disappointingly, are far heavier than .jpg or .tiff.

Quote from: Dune on June 24, 2020, 01:07:20 AMI had to anyway, because the tif and exr were around 40MB. Even saving as png in good quality gave a file over 8MB, so max jpg was the way to go.

Well I wish I had seen this before.

The 8mb limit was just a limitation of the web page submission form. It allows any limit, and though the server itself is set for 128mb. However, the script for some reason would either have CAPTCHA fail, or the whole submission timeout if over 8mb.

However direct submissions via email was not limited by this and could handle larger direct submissions, such as gathered projects.

Apologies for not seeing this and making this clear. :\

Quote from: WAS on July 07, 2020, 02:57:31 PMThe 8mb limit was just a limitation of the web page submission form. It allows any limit, and though the server itself is set for 128mb. However, the script for some reason would either have CAPTCHA fail, or the whole submission timeout if over 8mb.

However direct submissions via email was not limited by this and could handle larger direct submissions, such as gathered projects.

Guess you'll need to fix it next time. To be honest, I was, in fact, surprised that a file size limit has been there in the first place.

It doesn't even seem to be a justifiable condition, as I'm sure NWDA has enough disk space to collect even larger files. ;)

The file size restrictions have been in place since NWDA started challenges, so there is nothing to fix. The idea behind this is not to deter users from using a free or trial version. As with most software, these come with render size restrictions

I guess I didn't make myself clear.

What I meant by "fixing" was making it clear to the contestants that mail-sent entries need to respect the file size limit too if, like Jordan says, technically it is possible to send such entry, effectively, circumventing the limit set by the contest registration form. Otherwise, someone might argue that their, say, 10mb image was rejected despite the fact that the mail system reached the destination, ergo, accepted the entry.

Or am I getting too legal? :P

Not sure why you are going on about this ....  it says in the rules man:
Image Size – 0.6MB Min – 8MB Max
That's the size requirement for the Challenge. That's it ... If that's not clear or straight forward enough for a contestant then I cannot help them.