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We’re having another contest! And here’s why: Simply put, we’re working on some really interesting new technology and we need some good looking scenes to test with… and we need lots of them right away

The guidelines we’re asking everyone to work under (and the reason we’re calling it “Ghost of Ghost”) are very similar to the original feature sets from the old Ghost alpha releases back in 2000 (For those of you that may not know the history, “Ghost” was the codename of what eventually became “Brazil r/s”).

The rules are pretty Simple: Use straight, brute-force GI and ray tracing, and only use a couple of specific materials. This very constrained working environment might seem crazy by today’s standards, but at the time we released the original alpha-test versions, we had hundreds of people playing with the renderer and sending us stellar imagery that was beyond anything anyone had ever seen come out of 3ds Max (or most any other 3d packages at the time).

Back then, Ghost/Brazil was brand new and we had to test specific things before we could move forward with other features. Today we’re in the same spot and need new scenes to test on this new early-development piece of code. Besides, it’ll be fun to see what artists can do today when you take away all their advanced renderer controls and they stop worrying about rendertimes… And now, we can do this with big cash prizes, which we couldn’t do back in the old Ghost days.

So, let’s Kick it Old-School: Dust off those old scenes you have laying around, start re-rendering them, and get them into the contest!

Most of all, have fun with this. We look forward to being able to share more about what we’ve been working on here.

Contest Rules

• Start Sept 18 (Today!)
• End Oct 15
• 5 categories, with entries judged by SplutterFish jury
• Prizes include:
  • Overall Grand Prize: $2500**
  • Plus, five $1000 prizes: One for each first place winner in the categories below.**
  • Plus, the first 20 entries in each category, which meet the contest guidelines and “don’t completely suck,” get their choice of a free SplutterFish t-shirt* or a coupon for 50% off the purchase of any single brazil r/s license.
• All entries must include the rendered image and the full max scenefile, including all maps.
• All entries will be submitted with a release/entry form that gives SplutterFish a non-exclusive license to use and modify the scene
• Entries can be submitted privately, but we welcome artists to post WIP versions to the forum if they want feedback and help.
• Multiple entries per participant are allowed
• All entries must conform to the Technical Guidelines listed below.
• Everyone is welcome to enter
• All entries will be scored on a point system for technical and artistic quality with bonus points given for early entry (before Oct 1), animations, and scene complexity.

Categories

1. Architecture: interior, exterior daylight, exterior night, etc.
2. Industrial Design: consumer products, engineering, manufacturing, medical equipment, etc.
3. High-End Product Advertising: automotive, marine, jewelery, etc.
4. Non-Photoreal Animated Character: animated feature film style, FPS/Fantasy game character/environment, etc.
5. Photorealistic VFX: digital matte paintings, set-extension, hero-creature, sci-fi, period, etc.

Technical Guidelines:

• Use any version of 3ds Max, Brazil r/s V2 for 3ds Max, or the FREE Brazil V2 Rio Edition
• You can use full raytracing with brute force QMC GI (ie. “Global Illumination: On”) — no photons and no rendercache — GI is not required
• You can use the following materials:
  • Brazil 2 Advanced Material
  • Blend
• The Brazil 2 Advanced Materials must be all using the Default Shader with either a phong highlight or no highlight
• You can use the following textures:
  • Bitmap – in any slot in the Brazil 2 Advanced Material
  • Brazil 2 Fresnel
  • Mix
• It’s not required, but preference may be given to scenes that don’t have deep material trees (ie. avoid using blends within blends, and mixes within mixes)
• You can use the following for lighting:
  • Brazil 2 Main Light, set to “point” or “direct” with any Brazil2 Ray Shadows (so you can use area shadows, but not an area light)
  • You can use include/exclude lists with the lights
  • You can use the Luma Server Skylight
  • You cannot use the include/exclude lists in the Luma Server (or in other spots outside the Brazil 2 Lights)
• Use a Brazil 2 Camera, with any lens.
• Do not use:
  • Motion Blur
  • Depth of Field
  • Brazil2 Displacement (using max’s displacement is ok)
  • BzSphere and BzPlane Objects
  • Dispersion — any other feature (ie. Glossy reflections and refractions) in the Brazil 2 advanced material is ok.
  • Volumetrics/Atmospherics — You can use simple “Fog”
  • No render effects
• Scene cannot contain copyrighted material (ie. no turbosquid objects that you don’t have the authority to give away)

Please try to stick to the spirit of this and please don’t “game” the rules. If we have to change the technical guidelines to clarify something, we will.
Click here to go to the Contest Entry (Scene Submission) Form.
* for t-shirts shipped outside North America, the winners will have to pay shipping.
** cash prizes will be awarded via paypal. If winner resides in a non-paypal country, prize will be awarded via direct bank-wire

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The Ghost of Ghost Challenge: RULES – SplutterFish Forums