Challenge Winners - My Favorite Toy - Page 3

# 31 26-07-2011 , 11:00 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2004

Location: ENGLAND UK

Posts: 286

You shouldnt feel sad about the comments Nilla. If anything you should feel proud of the sites and the challenges. Some people can be bitter about not winning (especially when theres money involved) and others can take it gracefully. I think its obvious that your winners are of high quality and deserved to win whether they put 100% effort in or 50% or whether it was their favourite toy or not. I think the majority of people that participated might agree or atleast not be bitter about it. Out of 30+ entries its clear not everybody could win so congratulations to those who did.

Out of all the sites and forums around the internet, id have to say this is one of the most helpful and friendliest ive come across.

The next challenge sounds great too user added image

Quote

# 32 26-07-2011 , 11:10 AM

Administrator
Join Date: Jun 2009

Location: Prague

Posts: 827

iv01 -With a post like that I didn't think you were actually looking for an answer to your question. But no as far as I know the vintage tricycle and Leonardo da Vinci did not exist during the same century and he is not present on this forum. Vintage toys are collectibles and I had several from my grandmother which I played with during my childhood.

To quote the original thread:
"The theme for this challenge is favorite toys and you can make any sort of toy you like. It can be a classic toy from your childhood or something more adult like your current favorite gadget. Final entries in this challenge should be models which are textured and lit."
As it's an art challenge to me it is pretty clear that it's about a render of a model. For stylish renders there's a photorealistic toy car image posted to give a clear indication of what we were looking for https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35582

Quote

# 33 26-07-2011 , 11:30 AM

Registered User
Join Date: May 2011

Location: Budapest

Posts: 56

Hi Nilla,

Don't feel sad, I think that sadly this comes naturally with a bit bigger challange, and of course the bit unclear rules were a reason to complain. I've read through the new challange, and the critiria, it's much better I think, really clear in my opinion, and with that criteria applied to this challange, there shouldn't be much complaints.

So I'm sure next time it'll be better, but there'll be some bitter people always. But in this case I think most of the comments were just trying to emphasize these "unclear" sections of the challange.

So I'm really glad for these challanges, and for the feedback I'm getting user added image

I'll try to make a top list soon - I hope I'll have time for it - so others can get some more feedback as well - trying to add a little to this great community user added image

Quote

# 34 26-07-2011 , 11:39 AM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

LOL THX...it was my ONLY ruddy toy...he he he he...that and me stick and me blue heeler dog Rex (of course). I did however have a choice in horses...but alas the one I picked got spooked ny lightning and hit a tree head on...not nice for a 7 year old. I sincerely hope that 'similar' age means I am younger? bahahahaha

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 35 26-07-2011 , 11:45 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2011

Posts: 16

you didn't understand the sarcasm ) ok i say that way - that toy is of Leonardo da Vinci
that person has steel balls to play with that toy
about the contest:
there any word about "that it's about a render of a model"
and you should attach to threed that image and also words
"For stylish renders there's a photorealistic toy car image posted to give a clear indication of what we were looking for"
i made the model so coplex that pushed to the limit my hardware and i haven't any clue that i must render it with photorealistic view !
i could take something less complex and work about render !
PS i am not bitter !
PS sorry for english

Quote

# 36 26-07-2011 , 11:45 AM

Subscriber
Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Bolton - UK

Posts: 2,457

After reading the description of the new challenge I think you have nail the biggest problem some have with these challenges. Setting out clearly what your after.

I have always treated these like uni projects - given a brief and run with it within the guild lines and using my own take on it. Some times I like the complete freedom these challenges have here, sometimes I don`t - but then you can always ask a question here without having your head bitten off unlike other sites. One example I can think of was low poly vehicle challenge were the winning entry provided no poly-count, wire-frame and was textured with shadders (not textured which was in the brief). My only nag is the lack of good wip`s in some peoples entries, but then I post every step so not perfect myself.

I love the challenges here and would do them with no money - I think the new team running them have done a great job getting more involved and although they are not as out there as Mikes old challenges - miss you mike - they are still great fun.

It is nice to hear what the judges have to say about each of the entries but then again - how much time would that take. Going though the old threads I am probably the most experience challenge participant here (number 24 with the next one - my god that makes me feel old) and its safe to say my work is 100% better because of the feedback I get of everyone in the w.i.p.s. And even with my entry not taking any place this time (never thought it would as I was not here for a good chunk of the time) I am still chuffed that the maya side of the site took 3 out of the 4 winning slots.

Yes I have my own personal feeling about entries but as I said not the judge - glad I am not (could not take part if I was) - and this one, more than ever, was so close. I will say that none of the top 4 would have won in my book - but its not because of their skills.

Quote

# 37 26-07-2011 , 12:03 PM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

Personally I think we all won...to have such great talent and diverse abilities on one competition is remarkable in itself. At the end of the day...the money was not the factor for me...as a noob and green as grass if I enter any challenge...its to learn and be reveiwed by my peers and to improve on my flaws. The fact is money was offered willingly by Simply Maya to encourage growth and skills amognst us all...if direction or clarity is needed..there was and is ample time to ask the question. Constructive criticism is healthy and should not be held back...but remember this applies to us all as a group and more so the family we call Simply Maya. There will always be disagreement among siblings....but it should be applied correctly and with a good sense of comradery...I think this bridge has been constructed and we all get over it...and move on as a group and family...and on to the next chapter in our lives....

cheers bullet

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 38 26-07-2011 , 12:33 PM

Subscriber
Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Bolton - UK

Posts: 2,457

Think this is as good a place as any to post this - I was thinking that there should be a winners gallery part of the forum where the 3 (or this case 4) winning entries could be posted for all to see in the future.

A collection of all the winners - not saying we need to go back and put them all in there, but start now with the last challenge and let it build up.

They tend to get lost in the Previous Challenges (Archives) and the SimplyMaya gallery rarely gets updated.

Quote

# 39 26-07-2011 , 12:51 PM

Lifetime Member
Join Date: Feb 2010

Location: Australia

Posts: 4,255

hmmm not a bad idea Neil....

bullet1968

"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes

Quote

# 40 26-07-2011 , 01:56 PM

Registered User
Join Date: May 2011

Location: Minneapolis, United States

Posts: 135

Thanks for those who liked my Turtles entry too - Thats a great feeling in itself.

Originally Posted by s2-speedy

Awesome Turtles user added image

! Count me in on that!

Quote

# 41 26-07-2011 , 03:03 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jun 2004

Location: West Lawn ,Pennsylvania

Posts: 145

Hi Daveido,
I'm glad that you had a positive experience and that this pushed you to do something new. I saw the self-illuminated buzz in your thread it was great.

I also think it's a good idea to have a short critique by the judges on every piece, its especially nice when so many people worked so hard to feel like someone at least took the time to have a proper look at your work and its rewarding to get feedback for it. This challenge just brought such an incredible amount of good work and to be honest it was surprising how many people joined in. I think the previous challenges since we brought them back just a few months ago have been pretty clear cut in terms of the winner nothing like this. We'll have to have a chat about it here, hopefully I can drag words out of their mouths and scribble them down

Finally I feel a bit sad that so many of you got upset by this challenge and that it ended on a note like this. As the same thing happened last time but maybe not to such a large extent as the challenge was smaller I've tried really hard to post up clear guidelines for what gets taken into consideration and what's allowed and what is not. So please have a read through this challenge and if it is unclear in any way I would like to know now please. I can see how this is more of a misunderstanding of the criteria which we obviously did not make clear enough, than sharp critiques of winning images and I would hate to see this turn into a flame war over something that was supposed to be a fun learning experience. The best thing to do though is to try and make the best out of it and hopefully we can improve the challenges through this rather than destroying them. Let's focus on solutions.

Also we would have liked to send this to a poll but with a cash prize it simply is not possible to do so. only yesterday did I see some crazy mum posting on lots of expat forums about how everyone had to go vote in her 9-year old daughters photo challenge because she just had to WIN and not saying that it would happen here but it would definitely be a potential source of conflict.

Nilla

Originally Posted by Miss_Nova

First thing, Are my posts invisible, hello, can anyone see this? I posted the same thing as Daveido, and no-one seamed to notice. Makes me wounder if anyone even saw my entry.

Second,I think there was a lot of stress built up over the long delay in the judging. I know that was the case for me. But there is no ill will from me.

I, unfortunately will not be able to take part in the next challenge, I've got too much work and deadlines looming, I'll be back when things calm down for me.

Life is a funny thing,
Beauty is a blossom,
If you want to get your finger bit...
Poke it at a Possum.

Quote

# 42 26-07-2011 , 09:58 PM

Hobbyist
Join Date: May 2011

Posts: 35

Congrats to the winners user added image

illuzionizt.cgsociety

Quote

# 43 27-07-2011 , 03:47 PM

Administrator
Join Date: Jun 2009

Location: Prague

Posts: 827

s2-speedy: Thank you for the support, much appreciated coming from you as you had one of the best pieces in this challenge user added image

We're working a lot at the moment on trying to add the community aspects of the sites and hopefully we can get SimplyMax up and running over the next few months as well. I like the community here because people are friendly and fair with one another that's why I get a bit sad when you get nonsense comments attacking peoples work. Never stay sad for long though, thank god for beer!

Daveido: I also think there will always be some bitterness it reminds me of the endless arguments about the gallery on CGTalk. Glad the criteria made things a bit clearer for this next challenge and thank you for the positive comments. As well, if you send me a PM with where you'd like me to send your prize I'll get that sorted. Very suitable that buzz gets a toy story 3 book user added image

iv01: I got the sarcasm just fine but chose to ignore it as I found your initial post quite offensive. My advice to you would be to think before you address people on the internet in that way, because it might come back and bite you later in life. You wouldn't have to create a photorealistic render, but it said textured and lit which means it has to look good, it could be a cartoon render instead or something stylized. Most people in this challenge simply went with photoreal.

tweety: wow, 24 challenges that's a lot you should get a veteran medal user added image

The freedom these challenges have is good in the sense that it allows people with different Maya skills to enter which is quite important on
a beginner site, and it might be a bad thing when it comes to who should win as it brings in widely different things that are difficult to compare side by side. Maybe we could get Mike to create a challenge when he's not so busy with work, I looked at some of the old ones and they looked great he put a lot of time in. Great idea with the gallery, we integrated it with the forum for things like this more than anything it just got a bit forgotten. I'll add a post to the final's thread on this.

sandman300: I wasn't ignoring your post, I just quoted Daveido's as it was and the end of the thread on page 2 rather than going back. My apologies for that, didn't mean to make you feel bad. I also saw your challenge entry, in fact I went through your whole thread and if there was a best challenge thread award you would have won it user added image

I love how you got a hold of the original toy for reference and it was such a cool model. For me the texturing let it down a bit, some areas of the car are heavily scratched whereas other look perfectly new I find this unrealistic as you would have some minor scratches as well on something with wear and tare. Also the scratched patches on the bonnet are perfectly white and uniform, adding some different noise to break it up would make it more realistic. Some bump could improve this further as the whole car looks perfectly smooth to me and scratches and imperfections are not. The shader for the car paint doesn't scream metal and could be mistaken for plastic. Another thing is the environment which doesn't have nearly as much detail as the car itself so they don't fit together and I find it distracts from the model a lot more than it adds. The brown shader on the track doesn't have any specularity and all materials even rough ones like rubber would have some so it's impossible to say what kind of material it is. Unless the part of the track where the car is is many meters above the floor the length of each individual tile would be similar to that of the car so very small. This is of course possible in the real world but in most cases standard tiles are about 30x30 centimeters and it's about perception and what we expect to see so for this reason I would increase the size of the tile if I was aiming for realism. The final thing is the depth of field which is too high and completely blurs out the background while the rest of the image is in perfect focus I think a subtle dof would have worked much better in this case. These are small things but they make a huge difference, in the render of David Mitchells toy car which we posted as a reference the dof is what makes the render photoreal and it's ever so slight you have to look for it and really compliments the model. This is a question of personal taste but for me your car model posed in the same way with the same amount of dof and some slight tweaks to the shader and textures would have been much closer to photoreal. I do like the way you placed it on the track though because it's sort of jumping out at you and makes it look like a racing little devil but the color scheme and lack of realism in the environment lets it down a bit. I really wanted to post in your thread on SL I simply forgot. I think you did great as I remember reading it was your first attempt at photoreal and I just wanted to tell you what I thought in case you went back to it at some point, because these are minor details and the model is so funny. Shame you won't be in the next challenge.

Nilla

Quote

# 44 27-07-2011 , 04:21 PM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: UK

Posts: 6,287

Ah now.

Yeah it was a shite of a challenge to judge, I was there!! I found myself going back and forth over every thread, more than once...it was hard.

As with every challenge a winner will always stand head and shoulders above the rest regardless of whether it was photoreal or not, thats how a comp works does it not. My personal choice for second place was overruled in the the end, I dont mind, it was an executive decision and the right one.

if you want stiff competition and rules up to your armpits go and enter the cgsociety challenges. Then youll complain the rules are too strict...

also what you gotta remember there are no sponsors here either so the first prize here has to be really justified, so have a think about that too, where did the first prize come from??

If I were to offer some advice to those who didnt agree with the outcome: Up your game - its as easy as that, if you want it bad enough then you can have it. Thats how a race is won.

Many thanks to David and Nilla for their efforts

rant over next challenge

Jay

Quote