Just wondering if there will ever be another polycount modeling contest, who sets these up and how often do they occur? I'm really interested in a contest which involves creating normal maps.

well, Bobo's contests are yearly affairs, so you'll have to wait for that. Don't think anyone else has attempted to start one... problem being prizes and such (i think). I'm pretty sure anyone can drop the gauntlet.

So it is 2005 and no one has started a yearly contest yet?

well the last two yearly contests started around August to October. (Halloween monster contest and the elemental contest) so it's a little early [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Ages ago I wanted to throw out a likeness contest. It wasnt my intention for it to be normal mapped though. That's stuff's still so time consuming for most, I think you'd get less entries. Perhaps Im wrong. More like current console specs was my thinking. Initial response was pretty good. I even still have the rules written out somewhere I think. Alas, real life and work got in the way.
Id still like to get it together If theres enough interest, but not entirely sure when would be the best time.

Prizes aren't really a problem I dont think. Alot of us here can get games for free for instance. Time is usually the problem.

Here's what I had roughed out:

"The Actor likeness challenge!

Actor likenesses have become a bit of a staple work diet of mine and I have this feeling that games and Hollywood will be converging more in the future. So this will become a pretty handy skillset to prove and improve upon I think.

In my slight downtime in between projects I wanted to sit down and make a game resolution famous face with no chance of the cyberscan word being anywhere near it. Then I decided what fun it would be to turn it into a contest.

The prize is 2 EA published games for any platform of your choice.

The rules:

Build the head of a famous living or dead actor or actress ( Lassie doesn't count. Human please ) in the 3D package of your choice in no more than 1500 triangles. ( The model can be presented as quad's but its tri count is what's important ).

Texture map that head with one 512x512.tga for the head, one 128x128.tga for the eye and other extra maps are possible such as alpha for hair, but those alone should not amount to anything bigger than 2 more 128x128 targa's.

Provide at least 3 renders or screengrabs from different angles of your creation. Much better would be the addition of a 360 rotating .mov or avi but I realise thats a bit more work for some so not absolutely necessary. Absolutely no 2D post work apart from naming your piece ( your name not the actor! )

DO NOT STATE WHO YOUR MODEL IS MEANT TO BE PRIOR TO THE DEADLINE!

To keep identity of actor unknown, we should probably prohibit anybody other than the artist to post in their own WIP thread. That way we dont get folks going "It's Marilyn Munroe isn't it?!".

Two entries by different artists of the same actor is fine. That would be fun to see.

Two entries by the same artist of different actors is also fine. But no more than two.

I'd thought about charicatures but decided against it. I think that's really a whole other contest so the style here should be realism.

You can make one morph target for an expression or build expression into the face. Up to you.

All entries submitted by sunday February 29th which provides about a month and a half which should provide plenty of time for most folks.



Each entrant gets to vote on who's work looks most like the actor they are supposed to be. ( this should be obvious. If you cant figure out who a submitted piece is supposed to be then clearly you dont vote for that piece )

The winner is the artist who gets the most votes for 'best likeness'. I shall be entering but purely for fun and will not be eligible for prizes. The winner sends me his address and games list and I'll mail the prize globally.

WIP threads are important here.

Good luck! Any questions you can post here."

Hey, Daz, you should set that up [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Sounds like a fun contest. But if you do, I'd say remove this:
"Each entrant gets to vote on who's work looks most like the actor they are supposed to be. ( this should be obvious. If you cant figure out who a submitted piece is supposed to be then clearly you dont vote for that piece )"
Not everyone knows all famous people...If I where to do a famous old actor/tress, I might get the likeness spot on, but people might just not know the person...so I'd think something like 'include photo reference of subject only in final submission' would make more sense...

also would the likeness be the actors/actresses themselves or would we be allowed to enter the actors/actress as they appear in whichever movie? as some people would look quite different depending on the movie (John Travolta in Pulp Fiction verses Battlefield Earth. Gary Oldman in Silence of the Lambs verses 5th Element. Mike Meyers in Wayne's World vs Austin Powers vs Halloween [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] )

I think you should put forward your idea Daz. There's been a lot of interest in both 'release the heads' and the set you did on the Bond theme. Heads are good practice, and the likeness bit adds fun. Go for it!

Sounds like a good idea Daz. Now get it started! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I would definately be up for this contest daz. And i agree with what MacD said because it would probally be more fun to do someone more obscure.

The contest sounds fun but I would really like to push for something next gen, we are not that far away from ps3 so I think getting the wheel moving towards higher res artwork is in order, spec map normal map and colour map, if you choose, but don't make it a constraint, I have seen some normal mapped models that are way lower quality than old school hand painted style. Also if you feel the time constraint is too short just give some more time, in general most contests seem to be a month which isn't that much time as most people are working or going to school. If we are going to go with a next gen contest I don't mind submitting a prize of 2 EA games as well, this would include all the company's they own as we can get their games at a good price. Also I think Asherr's idea is great, create a celebrity in costume or not, this gives you a huge range of characters and you could do Indiana Jones looking mid 20's instead of Harrison Ford looking pretty aged as he is now.

Look at what happened with the last challenge though, Malcom. There were only a handfull of people that finished. Just because PS3 and Xbox2 CAN do normal/spec maps on everything, doesn't mean ever game WILL have them. Forcing contestants to create normal and spec maps will only reduce the number of people participating.
I'd personally like to see a non-character challenge.

well, i must say, i wouldn't have tried normal maps for a long time if it hadn't been a requirement for the contest. same with a lot of the other contestants. So i can definately see where it comes as great motivation. having said that, i don't think it should be required, though.

non-character sounds cool, especially with the industry focus on environmental artists ( thread )

I dont think normal/spec should be allowed at all let alone forced if you do that you will get uneven results. I say we keep it simple so everybody(you know, even hobbyists that dont do this stuff for a living and have no real need to learn new tech) can particicpate. As Vass said, just because you can do something dosent mean you should. I know theres plenty of artists that can actually get better results just from painting pre-lit defuse maps on these boards.

It looks like you guys did not read my post so I will quote myself which is exactly what everyone is pointing out. "I think getting the wheel moving towards higher res artwork is in order, spec map normal map and colour map, if you choose, but don't make it a constraint, I have seen some normal mapped models that are way lower quality than old school hand painted style. Also if you feel the time constraint is too short just give some more time" I looked at the elemental contest and I don't really see a lack of participants using normal maps there, also the 10k challenge seemed to have a good turn out? And that starcraft thing on cgchat has the most people I have seen yet. Vassago, I disagree, every single studio in the world will try to normal map their character junk when the new consoles come out weather it looks better or not, it is the natural progression for everyone to have a back of the box feature saying normal mapped characters and throwing technology at their games to try and stay ahead. Also as an environment artist I could get way better results using normal maps to render the lighting on surfaces and then baking the result down to the light map, this isn't new technology at all we were experimenting with using bump maps and baking the result down to the final light map on ssx3.

malcolm: They did read your post, they just dissagree with you [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Right, i simply disagree with you contest should be fun and something we can pull the maximuim amount of people to, having normal/spec optional gives an unfair advantage to those who know how to do that sort of thing. Dont get me wrong i know a bit about doing normal maps and all that but its more fun to simply whip out a low poly model then slave over a high-res mesh taking 5-10 times longer. I also disagree with your prediction that every studio will try to normal map everything when PLENTY of studios with just go straight to to pure mid/high poly characters and envirnments and skip the bump maps entirely, if not using curves/nurbs/etc in place of most polygonal stuff all together.

Very well, then we agree to disagree as I find it more fun to spend more time making the high res model. I'm not really saying everyone will try to normal map everything like doom3, but I do think people will normal map all characters for a while, there is simply no reason not too, I'm yet to work on a game where the character lighting is derived from the environment so it would be the natural progression to add normal maps to characters for better lighting while leaving the environments to be baked using higher res lightmaps. Coincidentally we have been building our terrain completely out of nurbs since ssx first started 5 years ago.

Sounds like a fun competition! I'd be up for this because it doesn't eat up weeks of (hobby) time and no concept art creation is involved.

Well Malcolm, I think you're wrong again. You say there is no reason not to normal map characters, but there is. We are a studio of about 12 people. Our games usually have very tight dev schedules, and short time periods between milestones. We don't exactly have the time or the resources to create high poly meshes for character normal map generation. There are a lot of other smaller studios that are exactly the same way. I mean, we only have 2 character artists, and one enviornment artist (me). We don't have EA backing US up, so there is no talent or money pool to draw from. We simply have to do the best we can with what we have. Now, I'd surely LIKE to have normal maps on our chars, and our enviornment. It's just not feasible for our studio.

Our characters are 5000 tris each, so they can be lit fairly accurately without normal maps. My problem comes in with the enviornment though. With our chars being so high, I only get about 10,000 tris for the enviornment (including props). This isn't an issue on the PC and Xbox versions, since I'm using lightmaps. But for the PS2, it's a bitch, since I barely have enough verts for lighting. The PSP will also be a hassle to work with. I do bake lighting information into my textures though, as this does help with the look of things.

And yea, I know you guys use nurbs for your terrain. If you're doing a racing game, dynamic terrain tesselation IS the way to go. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Very well then I agree that I am wrong and some studios will not use normal maps for characters even on next gen. Heck I don't even model characters for a living.

Daz's contest sounds great. Let's get this thing going.

I am all for you guys setting this up. The only thing I will advise is that you make sure to get all the rules and regs settled here BEFORE you announce anything and then go forward. If not, it seems to create MASSIVE issues.

Making normal maps a requirement pretty much sunk the elemental contest. I'd suggest using CGchat as an example of how to successfully set up a challenge. They allow normal maps but do not make it a requirement. It allows people to choose what they are most comfortable with. I've always approached the contest with the thought of "What if this was an assignment within a studio". That's flawed thinking as most of the people who participate in these challenges aren’t in them for the restrictions but for the enjoyment of working within a common theme. The cooler the theme and the more reasonable the requirements the more people you usually get participating.

Daz, I think it would be a great challenge. I recently finished a likeness of Daniel Negraneau for 5000ft. I had a blast with it. I’d like to see bust rather than just heads though. I really loved the bust presentation of your soldier.

- BoBo