The Ghost of Ghost Challenge: RULES

[cptvideo]

Contest: The Ghost of Ghost Challenge
Entry Deadline Extended - No more cash prizes - Free T-Shirts Still Available!

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
• Cash Prize Deadline: Oct 15 at midnight PST (night of 15th unto 16th)
• Deadline for Free T-Shirts: Nov 12 at midnight PST
  
• 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.
  • UPDATE - RULE CHANGE: All Entries (which meet the contest guidelines and "don't completely suck,")Until Nov 12 Qualify for a Free SplutterFish T-Shirt*
• 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.

Entering in more than one category, and entering multiple times for any category, is allowed.

Technical Guidelines:

• Use any version of 3ds Max, Brazil r/s V2, or the FREE Brazil V2 Rio Edition, for 3ds Max R5 or above (and Autodesk VIZ equivalents)
• You can use full raytracing with brute force QMC GI (ie. "Global Illumination: On") -- no photons and no rendercache -- GI is not required
• You must supply the scene file (see the submission form)
• Output render format can be any type supported by 3ds Max out-of-the-box.
• Output dimensions can be any dimensions you deem fit - if your scene has lots of detail, don't let that get lost by rendering at 320x240
• You can use the following materials:
  • Brazil 2 Advanced Material
  • Blend
• That means you can NOT use the following materials, among other:
  • Standard
  • Multi/Sub-object
• 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, using any bitmap type supported by 3ds Max out-of-the-box, including HDR and EXR.
  • Brazil 2 Fresnel
  • Mix
• That means you can NOT use the following textures, among other:
  • Falloff
  • Noise
  • Cellular
• 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
  • in-render Depth of Field (using multipass DoF is ok)
  • 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
  • No post-work compositing / animation editing. If you need to composite, use the source material as a bitmap on a plane in your scene - get creative!
• 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

Looking for the replies in the earlier thread? See: The Ghost of Ghost Challenge: earlier replies archive

[cptvideo]

Heya,

Zemmuone: Yeah, phong specular highlight is ok

FS: Airplanes would be great. The things I listed in each category are just examples to give people ideas -- feel free to come up with your own scenes types and fit them in to whichever category you think is best

sk...

[RichardAnnema]

Originally Posted by Foresight

I have a scene that is heavy on thousands of instances. Is this a problem?

Nope

Originally Posted by Foresight

Also it is running at about 450 megs right now, before textures.

That's another matter entirely Think that'll be pushing the upload limits. *eyes Scott*

[cptvideo]

Originally Posted by RichardAnnema

*eyes Scott*

/me eyes Chili

[RichardAnnema]

With only two days left, the deadline (October 15th, Midnight PST - the night of the 15th onto the 16h) for the Ghost of Ghost Challenge/contest is coming up fast.

The thread has been cleaned up and the rules post clarified where clarification was necessary - please make sure to re-read the post.

==================================================

In the mean time, we are going over current submissions to check for things that were specified as disallowed, and made it into the scenes anyway. So the rest of this post is going to guide you through making sure your scene is OK.

------------------------------

First - make sure there's no third party plugins - other than Brazil v2 - in use in the scene. If there are, there will be a warning pop-up in our tests and we cannot always assume that the scene will work without the plugins.

Second - make sure there's no missing maps. We do have the 3ds Max textures that come with the CD/DVD, but if we get a missing texture map warning we will proceed with the render 'as is' in our testing.

Now for the actual scene content...
1.1 Make sure you use Brazil v2 (r/s or Rio) to render with.
If you are using Brazil r/s or Rio v1, I will attempt to convert the scene to Brazil v2 but only on an 'as is' basis - no optimization will be done and the result may not render the same.
1.2 do not enable any Motion Blur
1.3 do not enable Photons
1.4 do not enable the Render Cache
1.5 do not enable Render Passes

2. Make sure you're using Brazil2 cameras
If you're currently using 3ds Max cameras, you can convert them using the Converters in the BrMax > Bonus Tools menu.

3.1 Make sure you're using Brazil2 Lights
3.2 Make sure those Brazil2 Lights are not Area lights or Dome Lights
3.3 make sure that they only use Integrated shadows or Brazil2 Ray Shadows
Area Shadows in the Brazil2 Ray Shadows are allowed

4. Make sure you have NO BzPlanes or BzSpheres
Replace them with standard 3ds Max Planes and (Geo)Spheres

5. Make sure you use NO Render Effects

6. Make sure you use NO Atmospherics other than Fog in standard (non-layered) mode

7.1 Make sure that the only materials in your scene are either Brazil2 Advanced or Blend
If you are using Standard materials, Multi-Sub Materials, or any other material other than Brazil2 Advanced or Blend, your entry will not be accepted.
7.2 For Brazil2 Advanced materials, make sure you use only the Brazil Default shader and Phong or None highlight shaders.

8. Make sure that the only texture maps in your scene are the 3ds Max Bitmap texture, Mix map or Brazil2 Fresnel map.
That means NO Camera Map Per Pixel (which uses bitmap files, but is not the Bitmap texture) or any third party bitmap file loaders (e.g. ChromeMap, IBitmap)
If you use any other map type, such as Falloff, Noise and Cellular, your entry will not be accepted. Consider baking any procedurals to Bitmaps using Render-To-Texture.

------------------------------

A MaxScript that detects most of the above situations and warns you about them can be found attached to this post.
This MaxScript was developed for testing on our end on a clean machine (to test for missing plugins and map files) and may contain errors but should help you sanitize your existing scene(s). If any error is reported, please let us know so we can correct the script.

==================================================

Happy Rendering!
(but don't forget to submit -before- the deadline!)

[shawnzer]

does the script catch materials only in use in the scene?

[RichardAnnema]

Originally Posted by shawnzer

does the script catch materials only in use in the scene?

It clears the material editor first; in theory it should only catch materials in use in the scene. This does include hidden objects, but might exclude any odd places where you might use materials that can't be caught by maxscript.. that would be rare, though, and we'd handle those on a case-by-case basis

[shawnzer]

this is a mess trying to undo all my multi sub object materials when there all instanced. I cant seem to get some of them to change. o well was just a for fun contest anyways

[RichardAnnema]

Originally Posted by shawnzer

this is a mess trying to undo all my multi sub object materials when there all instanced. I cant seem to get some of them to change. o well was just a for fun contest anyways

Yeah, looks like it's a good bit of work to make your scene compliant... shame, too - it's a very nice bike

[Nico]

This is the most busy time of the year in the print industry (at least here in Nam) - sadly I was unable to even get half way with my scene. Looking forward to a new challenge. Can't wait until you all tell us about this 'new' tech you've been working on. SO exciting!