[novena]

hi there!
I totally agree with Astanelle & Shadow: stick to the rule...
As I commented above in this thread, personally I prefer a neutral jury (professional CG artists, Maxwell & Maground staff) than a public votation determined by the amount of friends or social networks people has.
As Dario says, if facebook is the platform chosen, at least give some more promotion to the voting in some other places to atract neutral, objective voters (not to mention Maground has not given promotion to the voting neither their webpage or their FB page)
best
V

[taiko]

Personalmente no habria participado a este concurso sabiendo que la selection final siria a traves de facebook. En realidad mas valia usar mi tiempo en crear 400 cuentas de facebook que en realisar una imagen creativa. Pensaba que el voto del publico solo implicaba la gente del forum Maxwell Render . Lo que encuentro muy molesto tambien es que cada uno puede votar por su propia imagen. Maxwell render es para mi uno de los mejores programa de 3D y por eso pienso que un programa de esta altura no se merece un concurso donde la selecion es a traves de facebook pero quizas esto muestra la sociedad donde vivimos.

[seghier]

Vote like this is really a problem; i don't have good connection (2G) and not all the people interested by design or know what is design , they vote for friend not for the best work;
i use 3 hdri in my work and take many days to render , because i respect the rules ; it's very easy to use only the hdr and make many render
in future i will never participate in competition use vote;
what a designer do if he haven't facebook or twitter or internet ?
in university the student does'nt success by vote but by his work
i hope that future competition based on real-world critics like the render

[IvanThaDriver]

Yeah...

---> http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 32&t=40329

You need to use the background plate (photo) provided with the HDR when posting your final renders. Your renders MUST be composited into this background plate, you cannot just use the HDR also as the background.

Mihai
Next Limit Team

That means - if I knew before that rules ain't rules and voting will be like this, instead of jury made of 3D professionals - I wouldn't spend many hours creating my car from scratch, finding proper perspective, matching camera position, adjusting materials, tweaking HDRI iso to match backplate, generating shadow pass etc etc - I would just paste some neat 2D into the scene with HDRi background, sauce everything in postprocessing to make it believable eye-candy and ask a friend who has a few thousand friends on fb and wherever to submit it into the contest under his name.

Personally I would vote for llowye terminator women - but maybe they weren't "good enough" for final 10 in eyes of Next Limit Images breaking the capital letter rules were. Waste of time.

[prodviz]

Firstly, I think that the competition and assets provided (up to 14 stops of light and at a huge resolution) was great.

I can also appreciate that a voting system using Facebook and twitter is great for advertising Maxwell - which is a top idea.

However, had I realized 2nd and 3rd place would be decided through Facebook etc., I probably wouldn't have entered the competition - it just leaves things too open for friends and family to vote.
I'd be more interested in the 3D community voting and giving an objective critique.

Overall, I enjoyed the competition and learnt a few things along the way.

Just my thoughts.

cheers.

[valdesfernando]

Personalmente no habria participado a este concurso sabiendo que la selection final siria a traves de facebook. En realidad mas valia usar mi tiempo en crear 400 cuentas de facebook que en realisar una imagen creativa. Pensaba que el voto del publico solo implicaba la gente del forum Maxwell Render . Lo que encuentro muy molesto tambien es que cada uno puede votar por su propia imagen. Maxwell render es para mi uno de los mejores programa de 3D y por eso pienso que un programa de esta altura no se merece un concurso donde la selecion es a traves de facebook pero quizas esto muestra la sociedad donde vivimos.

Totalmente de acuerdo contigo Taiko, ahora, no te vayas solamente en crear cuentas de facebook, Twitter no se esta quedando nada atras en casos de menos de 100 votos en facebook y mas de 500 en twitter, jajaja, increible no? al parecer la gente hace lo necesario para conseguir una licencia de 1000 dlls gratuita, como dicen en Mexico ""Gratis?? hasta las patadas"" en lo personal, estoy satisfecho, los pocos votos que llevo, han sido honestos y agradezco a la poca gente que realmente le ha gustado mi trabajo y no a gente inexistente,
Por otro lado, de acuerdo a las especificaciones del concurso, facilmente mas de la mitad de trabajos, deberia de ser descalificada por no cumplir los requisitos basicos.
Saludos

[tonilluch]

Por problemas de tiempo no pude realizar mi imagen para el concurso, pero si llego a saber que la votación sería a través de facebook y twiter y además se admiten trabajos que no cumplen las normas del concurso no gasto ni un segundo en el mismo.

Totalmente de acuerdo con lo que exponéis.

[IvanThaDriver]

It would be nice if Mihai showed up here to say something about the rules issue.

[dariolanza]

Hello all,

From Next Limit I would like to clarify that we were already aware about the repeated votes that Tweeter allows. While the Facebook API is prepared to cut any repeated vote (allowing just one vote per person), the Tweeter API doesn't, admitting one user to submit more than one vote. But don't worry about it.
As we were aware of it, once the voting got closed, we proceed to check all the social network votes, rejecting all the repeated votes and counting one single vote per person, as it happens with Facebook and what is actually fair.
So all the social votes you see there are actual votes from different individuals.

In addition to that, we take note about your comments on this competition. For any competition to come, we will give less weight to the social votes, and more to our criteria.
I would like to say that in fact we did it this way (giving high importance to the public votes, the 2nd and 3rd prizes) to allow a more plural voice, avoid being us who decide and give chances to as many people as possible.
In fact, we though a lot about it before, and we always tried to avoid deciding from our single criteria (which obviously would be easier for us), but surely may cause other opinions like "There are the people from NL giving the prizes to their favorites... we have no choice..."

This was completely the reason for creating a "Critics + Public" vote, trying to be as transparent and fair as possible.

Anyway, we take note about your opinions and we will try to improve our next competitions (although we know that each to their own, there can be others disappointing). Thank you for your constructive suggestions.

Congratulations to the winners, thank you all for participating, and congratulations also to all the selected works -winners or not- for the high quality of your proposals.

I hope to see you all on the next competition.

Best regards

Dario Lanza

[valdesfernando]

Creo que tambien la molestia de muchos (me incluyo) es que no se llevan a cabo las reglas mencionadas desde un principio, a lo mejor no entendi bien las bases, pero yo entendi que el concurso era con tematica en "Render estilo Español" no encuentro mucho sentido en algunos renders seleccionados de los ganadores de premios y menciones honorificas con España, los seleccionaron por ser realistas, originales y tener buena composicion? si es asi, para que esforzarme en hacer algo "español" si puedo hacer algo que no tiene nada que ver con el tema y hacerlo "muy realista", "muy original" y composicion impecable y llegar a ganar!!!
en cuestion de los votos, es dificil saber si realmente son o no legitimos, pues me puedo pasar 4 dias creando cuentas y asi ningun voto se repetira.
No pretendo ofender a ningun participante, y con lo mencionado, tampoco quiero decir que yo debi ganar, que mi imagen era la mejor, NADA DE ESO, simplente que las bases y reglas de un concurso se hacen para seguirlas, tan solo mi opinion y queria mencionalro, habra algunos que esten de acuerdo, otro que no.

[dariolanza]

Hello valdesfernando,

I'm answering you in english just in case there would be other users with the same question.

From the start, and this is very important, the "Spanish theme" has been just a suggestion, not a mandatory requirement. You can check it from the original rules.
As the HDRI maps Maground provided where taken in Valencia, the idea of using a theme inspired in Spain where suggestive and we suggested it that way, but it never as a requirement for the competition.

And this is the way we declared it (and this is why many other users didn't tied to any spanish theme, sending renders with cars, motorbikes or even robots, what where of course accepted).

From the original rules -and we maintain that- we only considered for scoring the images:

1.- Realism
2.- Creativity
3.- Composition

These were the criteria for the renders selection from the very start to the end, and we didn't change them during the competition.

I hope this helped to clarify this issue.

Greetings

Dario Lanza

[IvanThaDriver]

As the HDRI maps Maground provided where taken in Valencia, the idea of using a theme inspired in Spain where suggestive and we suggested it that way, but it never as a requirement for the competition.

?

You need to use the background plate (photo) provided with the HDR when posting your final renders. Your renders MUST be composited into this background plate, you cannot just use the HDR also as the background.

Mihai
Next Limit Team

^ ??? what is that ?

From the original rules -and we maintain that- we only considered for scoring the images:

1.- Realism
2.- Creativity
3.- Composition

These were the criteria for the renders selection from the very start to the end, and we didn't change them during the competition.

"Realism oriented" HDRI "render shadow pass & use provided background" competition with HDRI producer was mean't about pasting 2D things into the picture? Comeon... It was a joke...

[Mihai]

I wrote that but I think we got some renders in before all this was decided, since it was decided pretty late. So a few renders were accepted like this. I don't think it changed much for the voting in any case.

[IvanThaDriver]

Voting was quite random and not art-oriented. It was about "hey friends, vote for me, I want an ipad!"

[taiko]

4. many friends on facebook

sorry I go