** Contest... any ideas for CONTESTS and PRIZES next time?? **

Before the end of this week I'll put the SCIFI 3D staff (ZOO, JAS[TwistViper], Zorbi, Andreas Jacobbson) votes and my own together to determine the winners.

But in the meantime I'm throwing around some ideas about the next competition including what company PR depts. I should email about donating prizes. I wanted to see if you guys could help me make a list. Here's what I have so far:

Newtek
Discreet
BOXX
Dell
Digimation

 

Why don't us, the 3d community spend time making as many EpIII Models as Possible
and we get a BOXX with maya and Max.
DO not start a new WIP thread, but Post in 1 thread and at the top you have your screen name, what you are working on where it is located etc etc

 

If you can George add Alias to that list

 

How about a competition with OT locations?
There are a lot of them we have'nt really seen modelled yet

 

Remember... I asked about places I could send letters too. PR departments at companies that would make good prize donations. Although I appreciate the feedback and suggestions... and duely note them.

Discreet bought ALIAS didn't they? I'll look into that. They might have PR shut-down on stuff like this if they are in the middle of restructuring.

There's a lot of desire for organic/character work by PXC, and myself too. I'm thinking we might run another location contest and a character/creature one at the same time? Depends on what sorta prizes I can muster up so that's why I'm looking for ideas on who to contact.

 

Yeah, Discreet was re-branded Autodesk Media, which then acquired Alias.

I'll add Pixologic (makers of Zbrush) and Softimage to your list. Maybe ATI and NVidia too, to have graphics cards as prizes...

A character modeling competition would be nice. That's kinda my strong suite .

 

You could try Vray or www.3d-palace.com (they are kind of SciFi). And what about www.starwars.com / www.lucasarts.com ?

I would not like two contest at the same time. I think that if there is only one contest ongoing, the change that models are finished, and of higher quality, is larger.

Jan Jacob

 

eovia has some good software like carrara 5, amapi 7.5 and hexagon. They're probably not as powerful as the likes of max, lightwave and maya, but alll the same are very user-friendly.

As for a new competition, I think anoter location one would be best, but this time with the whole saga

 

How about ARTas a sponsor? (The people that made the PURE render card that will make a 2 hour render in only 7 minutes).

 

Same here. Organic modelling!

About sponsors and prices: I'm sorry to say this but this community is a bit too small for what you guys are asking. CGTalk (now cgsociety) can get such sponsors because thousands of people visit it everyday, including professionnals and big studios. Why would they sponsorize a place where most vistors are n00bs asking for help on their fanfilm (edit: I said "most", doesn't mean everybody), because they don't know how to use software they downloaded on eMule the day before. I don't want to be mean or sarcastic, I just try to be realistic.

but maybe I'll take part to the next contest if it's interesting. I don't do it for the prices anyway. If I wanted to earn something from modelling, I'd look for a job.

Edit:

I'm not part of the Scifi3D staff anymore?

 

I agree with Jones...for the Noobs
_______________________________________



It's a good idea to make a contest!!A new one???....

 

Well... if you remember SCIFI-MESHES and LWG both runs contests and give away the things I mentioned like free copies of LightWave, Digimation software, cash, etc. One of the ideas I have is to lean more towards gift certificates and things AND put it all in a pot so you can pick what you want. That way we might be able to offer what they really want and need.

Dr.Jones... staff is kinda like for "active" people. You will always be... "staff" as in a lifetime alumni member. You are probably still noted as staff in the authors list. But usually by staff what I mean is people who are active and participate in the site, contests, in-house projects, people I regularly email. Last time I got an email from you it was you telling me you didn't have time for SF3D activities anymore even though you still visited the forum. You had work and life stuff to take care of. BUT ANYWAY... if you want you can participate in the contests voting as a staff member or you can enter them... probably can't do both for the same contest though.

 

i think the list of sponsors you are getting would be cool...i'd certainly be in on something with them on board...

as for the actual next competition i had a thought...

We had roughly a 2 month period for this comp so I think for the next we should make it 3 months, also thats how long challenges run for on cgtalk.com....this would allow for greater completion and detailling of models as well as allowing for people to attempt more challenging models... If we were to start on the 19th of February that would take us through to finish on the 19th of May, the one year anniversary of RotS.

As for subject matter I thought we could either stick to doing Episode III locations (but obviously different ones) or open it to the whole Saga. Or if we wanted to move away from locations we could do say vehicles which would allow those wishing to do some organic-like modelling a chance to do some.

No matter what the subject matter the prime focus should be on detail, accuracy and quality, as it was this time around, and some consideration should be given to those who light and texture their models (or maybe have a separate award for that)...

so yeh...just some ideas....

 

Hmm, maybe if there are several sponsors signed on the contest could go like this----Challenge to build some type of model (whole saga), then there would be a prize for that. Then there would be another contest where people would have to texture and render the model, with a prize for that also. That way there would be two chances for everyone (except I guess the person who won the modeling contest wouldn't be able to enter the texturing contest) and it would showcase someone's specific talents--some people aren't as good at modeling as they are at texturing/rendering (Myself in particular really can't model organics). Then at the end of the whole challenge there would be a final model that's really high quality and completely finished.

 

Well.. as you guys can see there is a LOT to consider. People don't really realize how complicated all this is. And why I didn't really have a lot of interest in it. There's a lot to work out, things to consider, guidelines to make, rules to create. Not to mention all the emails I will have to write to get some donations. I'm thinking it might take me at least a month to get the prizes together. So now we're talking... MARCH 1st... if I can work out all the other things I mention above. And yes.. I'm leaning towards 3 month contests... 4x times a year though. I want it to go on all year long. LWG/SFM do them like once every 1-3 years or more... as far as I am aware.

Depending on how many prizes I can get I might run one from Mar-May and another one a month later April-June or something like that. Do a organic character modelling contest then another one after that to animate characters. I also would do a non-organic animation contest. PXC is looking for some character/organic people too so they are on-board for membership donations again. So that's the next contests: NON-ORGANIC (locations again?), ORGANIC (character modelling), NON-ORGANIC ANIMATION, ORGANIC ANIMATION. So that gives you guys some advantage over others who may enter. Now you can think about it for awhile, gather refs, etc. Not sure what order we'll do it, or if they'll be all this year and overlap, details details.

I like the idea of "modelling" contests and with encouragement to finish lighting and texturing too. Part of the reason we're doing this is to see if some stuff can be made for SCIFI 3D too. Hence the reason we'll probably stay just within our realm of subject-matter (TV/FILM).

As you can see DARTHVIPER there's a lot to think about. There's 100's of ideas but each one has to be thought-out thoroughly.

 

Yeah, not to mention how hard it will be to negotiate with the bigger companies.

Now, you say the first challenge will be Non-organic modeling, does that mean a set or a vehicle?

 

also since it seems as though the next one will be non-organic modelling again are we allowed to say post a thread with our ideas, refs and experiments in until the challenge starts?

 

I have no problem with another non organic challenge, but some say episode 3 locations again... why? How about a "make your own TIE design?", or something like that, a bit personnal.
Actually, same thing could be possible with organic modelling: "create your most feared bounty hunter".
Or I remember Howard Day on ScifiMeshes, who made amazing models of ship supposed to be designed between episode 3 and 4...
Just an idea I wanted to share.

 

Jas is active?

 

Darthviper... organic usually refers to living things.

Robbi/Dr.Jones ... I think we're gonna do 3 months contests (maybe 4 months). We might start the organic/character/creature one first maybe as early as March 1st. Depends on what sorta prizes I can get. But we have at least the same thing again from PXC so we can start that one when we want. But maybe a month or so later start "non-organic" (location probably, and people can put in craft if they want) and it WILL be ANYTHING from any SCIFI TV/FILM show. Not just EP3. I think we'll attact more people being really OPEN with it... but not so open to anything like western stuff, dragons, etc. Lets stay within the scope of SCIFI 3D. TV/FILM and some original stuff. BOUNTY hunter is a good idea so we should mention that as an idea but maybe not limit it to just that?

 

JAS is working on HOTH shots, and he helped build 99% of the models for the Coruscant Spaceport, etc. etc. PLus he is active... even though like Zorbi he comes and goes sometimes.

 

wow that's news to me...

 

You said Non-organic first--sorry, had to point that out, so you will go to Organic first?

 

I remember a long time ago when I got the ball rolling on the modeling competition, I thought it would be a great idea to create your own vision of a Star Wars vehicle. We see it develop from sketch to final product, and it allows for much more creativity! I agree with Jones and others that some type of ship or character that is original or even from the EU should be done for the next competition.

If creating a character a brief should be given of who the character is, what affiliation they belong to etc...Could have some very interesting ideas put forth.


If any of the above ideas aren't picked how about this one for a proposition....Take a character, ship, or place from the Clone Wars Cartoon and either make a cartoon style or realistic version in 3d....For example; the crystals cave on Illum would be a model that could be done realistically and would probably get alot of use on here if the person who models it donates it....

Anyhow, there are a couple of suggestions....I'm starting to really like the second one the more I think about it....Lots of different things to model, and a bit easier to judge.

Later
Steve

 

The drawbacks of having a "do your own design"-contest is that those among us who are great at modelling but suck at design have no chance in a contest like that.
So if it's going to be a MODELLING-contest, let's stick to that.
If there was to be a DESIGN-contest that would be great too.
But personally I think it's a bad idea to combine the two.