Halloween Horrific Render Contest (CLOSED) (CLOSED)

LOL - Well, that's great!
We want to have contests of all kinds, so I'm glad to hear this one's for you.

It is, Thriller, Horror erotic, and action thriller is all mine. Now then to figure out what to create for this.

Yes! The owner wanted to surprise people with back to back contests and keep the fun times and momentum going.

I'm super stoked. Tell owner-person we say thanks!

I wanted to know that too, what about sex? lol of course I don't have to go that route XD. Just figured I'd put it out there for those who aren't brave enough to ask.

@FIRA - The owner wrote the rules, and it does say "the creepiest, most horrific renders you can possibly dream up".
Blood and gore is pretty horrific - so I think that's OK.

@Undercity4 - LOL - Yeah, that's a good question. Although not explicitly forbidden by the rules, I think it would be best to keep it Rated R and not X.

lol I always found that disturbing how gore is more acceptable over sexual content.
Especially since I read how violence was making the guys that created Mortal Kombat very sick.
They had to look up real mutilations just to develop fatalities. At any rate, I don't have to do anything sexual.
I'll figure out something with this.

I will just show you what I have before posting it. I've always been capable of doing extreme material even without high levels of gore. I take the psychological approach over the slasher approach. Not sure if you've heard of a comic series called CROSSED, lol but after reading so many of their books and looking at the art, I came to the realization they relied so heavily on extreme intense levels of violence that it was the only way they were able to garner a lot of attention. Plus no other comic series exist like it besides the STITCHED series, but that was also created by the same people that did CROSSED. It's just less gory, so a lot more people have read the CROSSED books. I think it would tough to match that level of horror and impress people if they've read those books before.

Yes - You may submit more than one entry, but you can only win once. Just start a new thread for each entry.

You can certainly include an animation or video in your entry thread, but the judging will be based upon the single "final image" submission.

For the Graffiti Contest, we had some people include videos, and that was pretty cool.

You can use any 3D software you want, including Daz Studio.
You can model from scratch, or use existing assets. High or low poly does not matter.
You can even use Photoshop in your workflow, as long as the image is a 3D render.

You can certainly include an animation or video in your entry thread, but the judging will be based upon the single "final image" submission.

For the Graffiti Contest, we had some people include videos, and that was pretty cool.

This contest will have judges that are involved in horror film production.
The owner has a few lined up, but he is waiting on final confirmation of their involvement before announcing them.

Isn't that a bit premature?
I mean, stipulating the criteria for being judged without confirmed judges?
I feel the judges would need to be confirmed and announced at least at the same time the contest is announced. Especially when there is quite a lot of money involved.

Also, would one of the criteria be a popularity criteria? I.e. the more people vote for one contribution the better rank it gets, as is so common among 3D contests?

@esapesa - Since this is a Halloween themed contest, the owner didn't want to delay the start of the contest while confirming the participation of the judges.

The other option would have been for RenderHub staff to judge the contest. None of us like that idea because it just wouldn't seem fair.
Selecting judges outside of the RenderHub community, but related to the theme, seems like the most fair and fun way to do it.

"...would one of the criteria be a popularity criteria?"

Definitely not. The owner wants the contests here to be "talent contests" and not "popularity contests" for sure.
It wouldn't be fair for someone with a lot of followers on social media to win simply because they can send a lot of people to their submission to vote on it.

The whole text of "Submissions will be judged on creativity, originality and technical ability. Judging will also take into consideration the difficulty and complexity of the overall execution of work" implies that there will be at least one person on the panel that has a working knowledge of 3D software, not a panel made up entirely of people who don't. For this contest, if it's guys involved in horror films as you say, I imagine they might. But so far in between the lines it reads like "the owner has some buddies," and they're the only ones who get a say.

With neither staff nor community carrying weight, stuff slips through like blatant copies of others' work or someone takes home money for plugging a few words into an app who does it for them. Recently on another site that judged similarly, one of the winning entries still had the stock-image watermark. Nothing in contests is entirely fair. But some are far more so than others. These things are about community engagement. Alienation has the opposite effect.

@korpinsulat - "...for plugging a few words into an app who does it for them..."

I see in the other forum post that you already noticed the announcement of the amended winner's list.
I talked to the owner today, and we have a simple solution to the potential problems caused by AI generated images.
Moving forward, all contests are going to require a gray-shaded or wireframe image to go along with their final render.
That requirement should take care of that.

The owner wants to have more regular contests here now, so he'll implement things as necessary to keep them in the spirit of the 3D community they are intended for.

Thank you for your feedback.

I could hug you. That restores a bit of faith.

@korpinsulat - "Virtual hug" received and reciprocated.

D'awwwww gawrsh.

"I understand that the characters and props should be from Daz/Renderhub marketplace"

Actually, that's not true at all. It doesn't matter where the content items come from.
Some people even model scene elements themselves, but you don't have to.

"...bringing to PS for post processing..."

Yes, that is certainly allowed - as long as the image itself is a render created with 3D software.

This particular contest has no minimum requirements for image size, type, or dimension.
You are allowed to post multiple images in your contest entry thread, but you must designate one as the "Final Submission".
Some people post WIP images so we can see their progress along the way, but you are not required to do so.
Your choice of rendering engine does not matter for this contest. You can use whatever works best for you.

As far as multiple images go - you are also allowed multiple entries.
You can enter the contest with more than one submission, but you can only win once per contest.
Just create a separate thread for each entry.

Thanks Foxy.

Sure thing!

I just got back in country and couldn't respond all week to this but was seething to weight in. First, I thought it very telling that the judges for the Daz contest showed how the judges there do not appreciate, understand or know jack about anything Daz technically. First place yes I can see that one, but not to take away from the work of the others, but common, there was many other more highly technical and beautiful and skilled artworks. I didn't expect MINE to win, I knew it was not up to par for many of the talented images, but none of those I put before mine except the 1st place actually did. And the fact that they picked an AI piece for 2nd place that was so obvious AI generated was mind boggling. Sorry waited days to rant :b

Even in this contest we have seen many AI generated pieces submitted, none of them could actually "originally" put the text "Renderhub" on them except in one case where one at least did photoshop it in after Foxy mentioned the contest required it.

I suspect this is going to be the trend for all online art contests moving forward. At least with the Graffiti the AI artist had to still go in and do SOME photoshop post work. But what about these others? With no limit to submission, you can easily have a few spam dozens or hundreds of submissions in fairly short order. deviantart has already become a cesspool of flooded AI generation with autopilot keyword stuffing and auto submission.

So yes obviously rules should be put into place.

Agree, having a set of rules would at least make the game a little fair for all. Already the odds are stacked with those not having the very best HW or owing hundreds of assets. Few set of rules or guidelines will not constrain creativity.

"Also what are the restrictions on using AI platforms and SW ?"

The image must be a 3D render, but your choice of software does not matter for this contest.

-----

Thank you, both, for your feedback regarding AI generated content. It certainly is concerning.
I had a conversation about this topic with the owner this morning.
Issues like this will definitely be considered for future contests here on RenderHub.
Since this is a 3D community, the owner wants the contests to be as "3D" as possible.

Yeah, the prospect of having those validated and not expressly ruled out definitely kills my will to participate in this or any future contests until it is.

--- UPDATE TO MY LAST REPLY ---

I talked to the owner today, and we have a simple solution to the potential problems caused by AI generated images.
Moving forward, all contests are going to require a gray-shaded or wireframe image to go along with their final render.
That requirement should take care of that.

The owner wants to have more regular contests here now, so he'll implement things as necessary to keep them in the spirit of the 3D community they are intended for.

Thank you for your feedback.

Well, it seems we're on the same page here. I just posted this message above, but I'll copy and paste it here in case you don't see it:

-----
I talked to the owner today, and we have a simple solution to the potential problems caused by AI generated images.
Moving forward, all contests are going to require a gray-shaded or wireframe image to go along with their final render.
That requirement should take care of that.

The owner wants to have more regular contests here now, so he'll implement things as necessary to keep them in the spirit of the 3D community they are intended for.
-----

Thank you very much for your feedback and thoughtful participation in the community.

No, you didn't do anything wrong. The owner will come through and apply the Contest Entry tags.
Thanks for participating!

Thanks for the quick response

You didn't do anything wrong. The owner will come through and apply the Contest Entry tags.
Thanks for participating!

The RenderHub forum does not have the SafeSite content filter, and contest entries are shared on social media.
So please keep contest entries "social media friendly". Thanks for asking, and for your interest in the contest.

Absolutely! Other people are doing that for sure.
And you can link to your entry thread here so people can come and comment on it.

Thanks for the info Foxy

Sorry for the late reply.
You are allowed to have multiple submissions, but you can only win once per contest.

Wonderful! Thanks for getting back to me.

Sorry, but it's not possible to edit an image after it's been posted - but there's a reason for that.

If people had left comments on that image, and the image was changed substantially, the comments might now not make sense - and it could be confusing for others reading them.

What you can do is just submit a new image in your thread. People do that frequently, sometimes to add WIP images along the way.

Ok, cool.
Thanks for the info.

Yes, the system will re-size uploaded images. And when you click on them, they'll be re-sized to fit the user's browser window.
But no - there is no problem with that at all.

As far as the Contest Entry tag - the owner comes by and tags them. No worries there.
Thanks for participating in the contest.

I'm sorry, but "Ends Halloween" meant when it became November.
The system was set to automatically turn off submissions at midnight, New York City time.
The owner is already in the process of finalizing all of the entries to submit to the judges.
Sorry about that.

The owner comes through and tags all of the submissions as official entries, which also makes them visible in the gallery view.
I talked to him earlier, and he said he was working on finalizing all of them to get ready for the judges.

The owner just posted the winners:
https://www.renderhub.com/3d-contests/horrific-render-contest

At least this time we only had to wait one extra day for a conclusion to be reached.

The owner just posted the winners:
https://www.renderhub.com/3d-contests/horrific-render-contest

I'm not going to spoil the surprise in my reply here.

considering how late the results are lol; i'm going to guess it's a close one

Congratulations to both midgard229 and Tod.

Sorry for my late reply here. I know we've already chatted, and you received your prize.

Congratulations, again - and thanks for participating in the contests!