3D Awards Voting Now Open

[StudioRendering]

Yup, there were definately some duplicate images there... Really loved going through the images! Takes to long to go through the animations on my end as well, maybe over the weekend when I have more patients.

[demo38]

if you get the warning in firefox, then copy the current address go into ie and paste the address, you get directed to the IE only notice page. I did the same thing. ....

 

open IE, paste the address... then erase the "/browser.htm" off the end....

 

(or just make sure you use the right address in the first place)

 

In FF, you can use the IE Tab add-on too. If you hit a page you need IE to view, just rt. click in the browser window and choose "View Page in IE Tab". It opens a new tab in FF, but it's an IE window. Pretty slick when needed. Can't say it would fix the redirect to browser.htm as I haven't hit that yet to try it out.

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

[lyca]

In FF, you can use the IE Tab add-on too. If you hit a page you need IE to view, just rt. click in the browser window and choose "View Page in IE Tab". It opens a new tab in FF, but it's an IE window. Pretty slick when needed. Can't say it would fix the redirect to browser.htm as I haven't hit that yet to try it out.

 

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

 

euhhh... any way to see this page on a OS X ?

this plug-in is only for windows

[4agdrift]

Hi, I'm new member!

[kimblarsen]

Hey Jeff,

 

You may want to look into getting your site compatible with Piclens - a fantastic plugin that allows inline web 3d browsing of images on sites such as Flickr and Google - http://www.piclens.com - I believe it is being used by the Ballistic Publishing guys for the jury work on their books; at least I thought that this was what was used for the last one.

 

Cheers,

Kim

 

Thanks Hugo,

 

This has been brought up in past years, but here is my argument for the way the voting has been set up. An image should not be compared against other images within the same year, but rather against what is being produced in the industry as a whole that year. Much like is done in the olympics, atheletes are scored against technical and athletic skills for what is expected of someone that year. If for example everyone messed up in their respective sports, they should all get a 1 out of 10, rather than the best mess up getting a 10. It's comes down to grading against a curve vs. grading against a current standard. I prefer the current standard.

 

So, in my opinion at least, you should look at an image and compare it to what you know is being produced in our industry now and score accordingly.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

[Jeff Mottle]

Hey Jeff,

 

You may want to look into getting your site compatible with Piclens - a fantastic plugin that allows inline web 3d browsing of images on sites such as Flickr and Google - www.piclens.com - I believe it is being used by the Ballistic Publishing guys for the jury work on their books; at least I thought that this was what was used for the last one.

 

Cheers,

Kim

 

Actually I spoke with them a few months ago and was seriously considering using it, however I found their plugin to be extremely buggy. I was also speaking with them about how we integrate banners into the plugin, which currently they do not support, so that kind of prohibits me from implementing as that is what pays to keep this site online. They do plan on evolving the plugin to support contextual ads, but that means that they woudl also serve ads we don't want. Their goal is to develop a new generation of browser for all types of content. I'm speaking here from its usage in the main gallery.

 

I did use it for the last round of judging on the EXPOSE books, but found it to a bit cumbersome to use in a voting context.

 

Anyway, it's definetly on my radar, but as of now, not an option. I do wish it was though.

[Adrian Bold]

Some truly great work in the image category. (A lot of rubbish too)

 

Yes, duplicate images exist - not a code bug thou Jeff - some of the submissions were physically submitted more than once with different filenames. Why? I don't know.

 

I understand most people wouldn't have the time to judge 800 entries, (enough to give a reasonable survey base anyway) but given you've applied your own subjective cull from 800ish entries, I have a few queries:

 

1) On what basis was the cull performed? Variety? Homogeniety? Stylised work/Photorealistic, Composition? Aspects? Activity? Creativity? Attention to detail?

 

2) The criteria states the submissions must be content produced within the last 12 months, so why are there images in the top 261 that have been floating around for years, some since 2004/5?

 

2) Given watermarks were mostly omitted by submissions, what's the reason behind giving everyone control to download and save out each image? Wouldn't it have been better to err on the side of caution and deny this access for the sake of artist's copyright?

 

3) I enjoyed finding some images from the same project and artist/studio, that told us more about the developments each time. - But I'm surprised to find a number of differing angles of the same scene submitted that don't give us anything more than the last one;

 

Maybe if you could enlighten us on what the other 600ish entries were like, and what about them turned you off to deny their inclusion in the vote?

 

Furthermore, maybe enforcing stronger criteria (ie 1 image per project/scene) will encourage artists to only submit the best of the best and in turn, naturally cut down the bulk of entries.

 

cheers

[Jeff Mottle]

Yes, duplicate images exist - not a code bug thou Jeff - some of the submissions were physically submitted more than once with different filenames. Why? I don't know.

 

Guess I must have missed them.

 

 

1) On what basis was the cull performed? Variety? Homogeniety? Stylised work/Photorealistic, Composition? Aspects? Activity? Creativity? Attention to detail?

 

All of the above. I tried also to have a variety of images with different styles with as little repetition as I could. Had I left all of the rendered bathroom shots for example, 50% of the images would have been toilets, so I only kept the best ones. Ultimately my job is to get keep the top 25% and cull the rest and leave it to the public to vote out the best images. One thing a lot of people forgot to consider is that some of the images might not be great, but that's what got submitted.

 

2) The criteria states the submissions must be content produced within the last 12 months, so why are there images in the top 261 that have been floating around for years, some since 2004/5?

 

Well, I can't possibly have in mind every single image that was ever created, so there is really no way to prevent this. I'll try to make this more apparent next year, but the reality is 70% of the world do not read anything you tell them.

 

2) Given watermarks were mostly omitted by submissions, what's the reason behind giving everyone control to download and save out each image? Wouldn't it have been better to err on the side of caution and deny this access for the sake of artist's copyright?

 

There is no way around this. You can do cheap javascript tricks to prevent right clicking, but that does not prevent someone from doing a screen capture. The reality is people who are going to steal images are going to do it no matter what you do. If you're worried about it, then a subtle watermark can help prevent it, or don't post your images publicly.

 

 

3) I enjoyed finding some images from the same project and artist/studio, that told us more about the developments each time. - But I'm surprised to find a number of differing angles of the same scene submitted that don't give us anything more than the last one;

 

Noted. Will try to avoid this next year.

 

 

Maybe if you could enlighten us on what the other 600ish entries were like, and what about them turned you off to deny their inclusion in the vote?

 

Anything that did not meet the criteria mentioned above. Some images were just plain poorly executed. It's hard to explain why over 600 images were culled without going over them one by one (which I'm not going to do). It's hard to cull images, very hard. As Ernest pointed out in another thread, there are images you like that you have to cull. When you have 800 images, you can't keep them all. Even some good ones.

 

Furthermore, maybe enforcing stronger criteria (ie 1 image per project/scene) will encourage artists to only submit the best of the best and in turn, naturally cut down the bulk of entries.

 

One per scene is a good idea. As I was going through the images this year, I thought about imposing a limit of 3 images per person or company, but it's hard enough to get people to submit, so making it harder to get images it not in the competitions best interest.

[Adrian Bold]

Thanks for the good replies above Jeff. Hopefully they'll save the same questions being asked over and over.

 

A few other ideas for next year, here to help.

[Ernest Burden III]

I just got through the images. A lot of great work!

 

On to the animation. Ironically, the first up was my submission. Maybe its because I paused the QT player while it DL'ed, but when I came back to play it, the audio was a few octaves higher than it was supposed to be. It sounded truly strange, like I was playing a 33 at 45. (Vinyl record reference for you young'ins). The video playback skipped and stuttered and looked extremely compressed. I'll assume its because of how I encoded the file I uploaded. Let's just say I don't expect to win if that's how it looks when people play the thing. I don't expect to will anyway, there's much better material in the contest. The next anim. up looked, sounded and played fine. So it was probably something I did to my file.

 

Good luck, all!

[Hollow]

Like others, want to add my thanks for the work that's gone in. As someone who has an interest, but very little knowledge of the subject, a way to view the files without voting would be great. I don't feel I, in my ignorance, should have any influence on the scores-but do want to see the excellent stuff that has been produced.

[Jeff Mottle]

I just wanted to post a quick note here that I AM monitoring for fraudulent voting practices on the scoring of the 3D awards. I have a number of algorithms that look for this.

 

Just this morning I disqualified one company (one that many know well and has participated on these forums) as they were dumping bogus votes into the system just to pump up their images and animations. All I can say it how seriously disapointed I am. If you have done this, you will not only be disqualified, you will be banned from ever submitting images or animations to our competitions again.

[gfa2]

I just wanted to post a quick note here that I AM monitoring for fraudulent voting practices on the scoring of the 3D awards. I have a number of algorithms that look for this.

 

Just this morning I disqualified one company (one that many know well and has participated on these forums) as they were dumping bogus votes into the system just to pump up their images and animations. All I can say it how seriously disapointed I am. If you have done this, you will not only be disqualified, you will be banned from ever submitting images or animations to our competitions again.

 

Ouch! Not too bright.

[Ernest Burden III]

My only problem with the voting (besides the IE-only thing, and QT hating XP-64) was that I could not figure out how to score one of the animations an '11'. That button wasn't showing up for me.

[Adrian Bold]

A scandal!? Crikey that's newsworthy. Way to go Jeff.

[Hidden_Pixel]

Hey Jeff,

 

I have been thinking about the voting incident you had regarding a company trying to fix their votes. I have always been interested in how many votes are actually cast. Does the size of a company make a difference?. For example a company with thirty employees, a good number of them may give their images ten. I am sure there are so many votes that this isn't a factor, just a thought.

[Jeff Mottle]

Hey Jeff,

 

I have been thinking about the voting incident you had regarding a company trying to fix their votes. I have always been interested in how many votes are actually cast. Does the size of a company make a difference?. For example a company with thirty employees, a good number of them may give their images ten. I am sure there are so many votes that this isn't a factor, just a thought.

 

The images received around 600 and the animations around 300 votes each. You would think that it should not matter, but when the company registers 20 bogus accounts and votes their images a 10 and all of the others a 1, it does affect the results enough. The diference between 1st and 5th place was only 0.21 out of 10, so it's easy to push your way to the top if you cheat. Unfourtunately because of the company who thought it would be fun to do this, I had to spend 5 hours Wed night scouring the votes, doing statistical analysis on the votes and manually reviewing the votes of several hundred possible discrepancies to ensure there was no more vote tampering. I was and am seriously not impressed at all by these guys.

[signet]

Name and Shame!

[Jeff Mottle]

Name and Shame!

 

As much as I think they should be "outed" I won't. They know who they are, and they won't be in any competitions in the future.

[Hidden_Pixel]

It is worrying that a company would go to those lengths and a real pain for you to have to go through the votes. I personally preferred when a panel of experts made the choice. I take it you would never bring that back. Maybe I am the only one who liked it that way.

[Jeff Mottle]

It is worrying that a company would go to those lengths and a real pain for you to have to go through the votes. I personally preferred when a panel of experts made the choice. I take it you would never bring that back. Maybe I am the only one who liked it that way.

 

Well I am going to go back that way next year. The reason I ditched it was because of the hassle to get all of the judges to submit the scores on time and I also found the judges scores also reflected very closely the public scores. However given this recent incident and knowing that no matter how much technology I throw at it, there will always be ways to try to cheat, I'm bringing back selected judges.

 

The plan is that I will cull the submissions to a usable number, have the selected judges pick their top 25 and then we will all meet somewhere in person to finalize the winners. I will probably also keep the public vote, but it might only count as 1 judge. For example 5 selected judges and 1 virtual judge (the public).

 

I'm also going to implement more categories and lengthen the entry period.

 

I know a lot of competitions do this, but what is the reaction to implementing say a $15-20 entry fee so I can pay for the travel costs of the judges. Would people be amenable to paying this? The one draw back is that I know it would reduce the entries.

[Hidden_Pixel]

The ideas for next year sound very cool. I personally wouldn't mind paying an entrance fee. How many actual entrants were there to the contest?. I know 800 images but is that about 150 actual companies and individual entries.

Edited June 6, 2008 by Hidden_Pixel
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[Jeff Mottle]

The ideas for next year sound very cool. I personally wouldn't mind paying an entrance fee. How many actual entrants were there to the contest?. I know 800 images but is that about 150 actual companies and individual entries.

 

I don't know the exact percentage, but most people submitted multiple images. The fee should also ensure higher quality of overall entries and only submitting a few of your best images, rather than their entire portfolios.

[Hidden_Pixel]

Completely agree. I now look forward to entering next year.

[Bwana Kahawa]

I know a lot of competitions do this, but what is the reaction to implementing say a $15-20 entry fee so I can pay for the travel costs of the judges. Would people be amenable to paying this? The one draw back is that I know it would reduce the entries.

 

Are you thinking the fee would be on a per image basis, or per member? Although per image would make more sense, it would ramp the cost up for people who've produced a range of work over the year - as you say, most people submitted multiple images...