The glory masterplan for a fairer contest handling!

[Reilsss]

I talked with Rick FX aboutthe last contest. And I promissed him to write down a set of Ideas for a next contest. Sinces those are only my ideas I feel like we should talk about it first befor something get set.
I call my idea the Master Plan.

Part 1. Befor the contest

- Feedback from last contest. (Gain feedback to make fix things that went wrong, sounds good to me.
- Setup the contest targets. (What car to model, low or high poly etc?)
- Clear rules, that explain what happens in the contest and also what happens after modelers are done. (Descript maybe how the voting going to happen?)
- Prices. I guess to have a price is genrally a nice idea. I just have no real idea what is good for prices in genral. sorry
- Collect opponents. Like in a sports event people have to register a week or so befor it start. I think we should have 6 or more people for a contest.
- Choose if the contest should have handicaps (to catch less skilled people up) or not. (A Handicap could be handled by scoring system.)

Part 2. Durring the contest.

- I wonder if we should forbid people to join a already running contest. At last you can not join a current running sports event. Such as a race for example.
- We should have a person that answers upcoming questions durring the contest. By default could this be the contest runner be?
- What about a more detailed rules about WIP screenshots? So watchers can see better how a car builds up. Maybe say 10 screenshot
as minium. And each from a diffrent stage of modeling?
- There should be enogth time. 1 Month is probally minium. But one and a half or two months might be better, as most of us go to college or work under the week.

Part 3. After the contest.

- Instance of sending final screenshots in, I think about sending the model itself to a trustful person. This trustful person could make screenshots of each car, from the same viewpoint engine. (As example, anything in ZModeler)
- Alternative Idea could be that we let somebody (Rick gave me the the thougth that he could do something like that? May Rick gives us his point of view of this himself?). This render should show all cars out the same angle and camerapositons. So a compearing is easyer for anyone.
- Voting can be done in a Classic way (like Esprit and MidPoly Contest)
- Or be reviewed. (I think about a system like games get reviewed.
You split your oppinon into diffrent categorys. (Say Grapics, Details, Skills etc) And give for each area points. Counting then those together to get the scoring of a model. (This might be easyer to follow as a classic vote, as you see who scored in what area)
- I wonder if this scoring should be made by independed people? Definitly it has to be people that are not involed into the contest. (Thanks Icekid for this good idea)
- If we use independed review idea. The winner will be selected follow:
1. Person that reviews a model writes scoring for the diffrent caegorys down.
Example Grapic 80 of 100, Details 65 of 100 and Skill 72

If we use handicaps we might count skills with a minus (So the more skills you have the less handicap you get)
That would be then: 80 + 65 - 72/2 = 181 points.
(I do skills / 2 so it pulls your scoring not to extremly down)

If we use no handicaps we might just iroge the skills of the autor?
That would be then 80 + 65 = 145 points

Now when everybody made his scorings for each car we would count the scores together. The one model that has most scores then will win.
Example:
Person A:
Model1 has 172 points
Model2 has 135 points
Model3 has 154 points

Person B:
Model1 has 163 points
Model2 has 159 points
Model3 has 162 points

All scores counted together:
Model1 has 335 points
Model2 has 294 points
Model3 has 316 points

And we see Model1 has in this example the highest points. And would win.


Example for the scoring system:
here my ideas for categorys we could give points for.
(we definitly can optimiz this while we discuse, if this idea is useful at all.
--------

Grapical appear:
This is what you seen on the screenshots. And what you voted last time.
The nicer the car looks, the better it scores here.

Level of detail:
Is there a dash? are there doorpanels? Is there a windowwiper?
The more details from the real car became released in the model the higher you score here

Skill level of the autor:
This would be one of the Handicap things to even up between the skilled and unskilled onces.
So simply the more skill you have, the less handicap you get.
We can can do this A. by giving 100 for max skill and count it with minus. Or B give for max skill 0 points and count it with plus.

Polygon structure:
Good structure gives more points as a messy one.

Polygon count:
Might be another handicap. (I have perfomance of weaker computers
in mind. Where we know: A Model with a lot poligons causes an easyer fps drop as a car with less polys)
So maybe the closer you get to the maximum policount. The smaller the Polycount bonus would be for you.
If you have a lot of poligons in your pocket still (Example only 6000 of 10.000 used. You get more bonus as when you only have 50 poligons left.

Textures?
The better the textures are, the more points you get. (Some people are just awesome in this and should get honored for this skills I think).

Tricks inside:
Some people know newage skills such as normal mapping, or some classic tricks like preshaded textures. Sinces not all have skills for that we could add here another optional handicap area. that gives bonus points when you leave this out. But then we could score it the opposide way when we do things without handicaps. The would people that know this special skills get honored for that extra.

Difficult level of model:
If we do something like the Esprit contest that give diffrent hard models to offer. I think models with tricky and hard to model shapes. should get a Bonus. Simply because its not as easy as boxy and simply things. I think this should be not an handicap category be. But of corse if you think diffrent we could define it as another handicap.

Dashboard:
A Dashboard is by car model almost as much work as the exterior. So I think you should get points for doing this. Then this option only make scenes when you are allowed to do this optional. (Example Esprit contest did not force you to model a dash).

Review:
Optional I could image that the person that gives the scores writes a little bit down for each car he reviews. "I gave the car this scores because I like this and that. But dislike this and that..."
(I'm not sure if I go with this idea already to far and to complex?)

Now I like to know what you people think about this Idea. To see if its garbag or glory.

Note 1: I rewrote the whole Idea to match the first Ideas we discused sofar, I also tryed to make the description shorter so my broken english confuses you not to much. (date: 9.11.2007 0:30am meep)

[[GT]Icekid84]

My personal oppinion is if you want to revamp the rules then it should be done by someone who wasnt a contestee in the contest, who there for has no feelings on the matter IE not biased in any way. An outsider to judge how things should or could be done next time. But unless there is another car I badly need I dont have to worry since Ive got enough cars to finish up.

[Reilsss]

True enogth, that why I place this to discusion. What I wrote down is one idea. other people maybe have a diffrent, even better idea. But we do not know it yet as nobody sayed it to use yet. Hopeful people will do.

[RedTwentyFour]

yes i said your ideas where good, but i feel a bit attacked right there, man :/

btw, a good contest doesnt have to care about money, its sponsored.
and giving contra points for preshading and normal mapping is a bad idea, its should give additional points because its new age and gives great abilities and a look of the skills of the contestee.

- Rick.

[T-Shine]

Originally Posted by [GT]Icekid84

My personal oppinion is if you want to revamp the rules then it should be done by someone who wasnt a contestee in the contest, who there for has no feelings on the matter IE not biased in any way. An outsider to judge how things should or could be done next time. But unless there is another car I badly need I dont have to worry since Ive got enough cars to finish up.

My thoughts exactly.
In addition hereto, I would also like to tie a comment and my thoughts to some of the other items mentioned by Reilsss .

Sometimes, contests are fortunate to have sponsored prizes, in which case no hard-earned money (if I may use your own terminology) is spent.
(edit: @Rick: sorry, I missed your post, mate)

Handing out the model to the public is obviously the ideal solution, but such publication is somewhat problematic as to where the models get distributed and in whose hands.

I know handicapping a contestant because of skills happens in for instance motor sports and the like, but from a principal point of view I find that very inappropriate in these modelling contests - simply put; if you are good, your chances are good. If you are better, your changes are equally better. But again, I can merely speak for myself.

Degrading a point score because of the amount of polygons is only acceptable, if spending as few polygons as possible is the very purpose of the contest. If not, it is only fair (in the spirit of fairness which this thread is about displaying) that the contestants are allowed to take advantage of a beforehand given limit of polygons.

Penalizing contestants for 'tricking' textures and what not, is, again, very wrong. Baking textures with shading, for instance, contributes to a visual improvement, and if anything, this should up the points - not take them away!



T-Shine

[RedTwentyFour]

T-Shine's playing my parrot today it seems :p

- Rick.

[Reilsss]

I see well, I did NOT want to attack anybody. I guess the way I wrote it sounds just not correctly. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm poking and whining. I only wanted to put the more or less complex idea down.

I guess that the earn extra points for special techniques can be changed.

I mostly wonder if any of you likes the idea to split your vote into diffrent categorys (something familar like I showed in the end of the post?)
Or if we should just stay with the traditonal voting like the last two times?

I rewrote the article for a better understanding and for better ideas.

I added the idea of a optional handicap thing. May you people like that a little more as the orginal idea.

[MadDash]

keep going with discussing these rules because it feels like we are getting closer to having some real structure to the contests and we'll have less confusion among contestants. I don’t have much to include for ideas but I am a member at a different forum and heres an example of the rules for one of their contests:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/lo...ons-rules.html

[endo]

To be perfectly honest the rules, and the way the last contest went is perfectly fair. When you start introducing lots of rules, you need to get judges that are qualified to judge how good the technique and quality of the model are which i'm sorry to say no one here is.

The whole point is, if you're going to start assigning points based on the look of a mesh, or textures, its easy to look at a mesh and arbitrarily say it looks nice or clean etc, but from a technical point of veiw, is it actualy clean, has the modeller taken into account things like poly distribution, speed of rendering, the way reflections are treated, optimised textures, are pointless details being modelled..etc

so if we were to be picky.... you would loose points for wasting polys on stupid round buttons on the interior and a high poly dash, horrbile dense poly fans coming off wheel arches, bubbly looking edges because chamfers arent tight enough, inconsistant poly distribution and tris that would cause reflection stretching and or reflection errors. but basically.. on the whole none of the models were free from being torn a new asshole if a pro came along and gave a decent crit on the way each entry was modelled.

And if we started looking at textures... ill bet my left ball, that for the most part the textures have oceans of space, and details that are sized randomly that arent the same resolution as each other. because the quality of a texture also takes into account the optimal usage of a texture page... though ive seen some in my life that are so damn complex its easy to get lost.

in the end only one or two people i know would be able to take the critiscism, with the rest being unhappy, and a few complaining about how mean the judges were. So, at the end of the day, the contest is for fun, hence leave the rules the way they were,

if anything, next time, 15k hot-rods should be the name of the game.