[ Closed ] Integrated Technology

Don't Forget about the contest!

This sounds, like the kind of a challege that could actually make me finish my ancient Eames Lounge thing.....

But now a question about your rules: Still or moving? (Looking at your original message I'd guess "moving")....

Well I guess this contest was a flop

Well, it's not always hard, but there are various forms of resistance:

1. holiday periods tend to take people away from their computers;
2. this is a relatively small community, so even popular ideas may get only a few subscribers;
3. I think a reasonable proportion of the community are fairly non-competetive (as distinct to uncompetetive);
4. most of the ideas that do catch on are because something caught people's imagination. This does rather make it difficult to come up with competition topics, as many topics which appeal to the proposer don't appeal to enough other users.

On the other hand, some of the ideas which have caught on have resulted in really amazing threads, eg, the 'lens' thread, the 'riding slug' thread, and various other threads on smoke, fog, diffraction, ambiant occlusion, rainbow effects and laser effects.

Looking at this list, I see most involve interesting light effects - but I'm not sure if this is purely because I am fascinated by light effects and therefore notice threads on that, or whether the more active members of the community share my interest in light...

Cheers!
Nik

I would not be a member of any club that would have me as a member
- Groucho Marx

Hi DCrux,

I'm not sure I completely followed eveything you suggested in your post.

However, a few points seem clear (from my point of view, at least):

1. Many of the longer threads have started with a "how could you do this with AOI?" question. The original question was almost always to do with a scene that someone was actually trying to model. So there was a specific point to the original topic.

2. I can recall many of those threads leading to contributions by others on both the original scene file (if it was posted), or with additional scenes. Some threads such as 'riding slug' have coalesced into a small collabative team building a much larger project (a small animation) than the original goal (a scene or just an individual character).

3. Very few of the discussions have been technical to the extent of being from the point of view of a programmer. Those types of discussions seem to live almost exclusively on the SourceForge Developer forum.

4. Most of the questions I've seen are more oriented to "how can I create this visual effect?" rather than "How can I apply this technique or technical feature?". My perception of these forums is that the former normally leads to the latter, and not the other way around.

5. Most (though not all) of the popular threads have involved a supplied scene or object. I think for many here, competitions which require people to create a complete scene from scratch require too much time that could be used in other existing projects.

From what DCrux has pointed out and from the points above, it seems to me that the best way to start a collaboration or competition in this community would be to state the challenge in a form something like one of the following:

1. "How would I create this effect?"
2. "How many different ways can we create this effect?"
3. "How would I combine these (multiple) effects in the one scene?"
4. "Let's all try to make the most imaginative use of this effect/feature"
   Eg, Marc posted a competition or challenge on the use of ambient occlusion, which was really fun
5. "What effects can people suggest to spice up this supplied scene?"
6. "In which different ways could I animate this effect?"

etc.

Cheers!
Nik

I would not be a member of any club that would have me as a member
- Groucho Marx

Oh, and just to be clear: I am a programmer, so my views here may well be coloured by that.

Cheers!
Nik

I would not be a member of any club that would have me as a member
- Groucho Marx