March 8^th Challenge - "Wide shot in a cramped place" - Winners

First Place - 02 - Marc de Jong (QT 5 required) (Download 441 kb)

Second Place - 01 - Trevor Nelson (Download 428 kb) Third Place - 05 - Florian Maurer (Download 197 kb)

All Entries

03 - Woody Selick (Download 244 kb) 04 - Patrick Bliss (Download 278 kb) 06 - Troy Edelmayer (Download 199 kb)

07 - Roger Grow (Download 427 kb) 08 - Christopher Richard (Download 483 kb) 09 - Michael Luscombe (QT 5 required) (Download 497 kb)

March 8^th Challenge - "Wide shot in a cramped place" - Rules

A little change of pace this time, in more ways than one. Firstly, entries will be QTVR panoramas only (no cubics please). If you are unfamiliar with QTVR panoramas, they are warped renderings that get translated by QuickTime so that it appears as if you are in the center of an environment. You can pan 360 degrees left and right, and usually a healthy amount up and down too. Strata3D can get you 90 percent of the way there, and there are free utilities on the internet to get you the rest of the way. Brief instructions below.

Secondly, the subject requirements are a little more strict. The pan will be taken from the inside of a futuristic shuttle craft. Your creative brief is as follows (adapted from the ,in progress, Project:Phoenix, which can be found here.)

"The ship is a small, orbit-to-surface military personnel carrier. One pilot and one copilot can be seated in the cockpit (think of a small, commercial jet). There is a large windshield in the cockpit, which may or may not be covered by a heat-shield, depending on conditions outside. The main cabin compartment is spacious, seating 8-12 soldiers with gear, with storage for hostile environment suits. There is a bay door for deployment, several portholes, and a 3D display unit mounted on the ceiling for impromptu mission briefings."

I do mention "pilot", "co-pilot" etc, but there is no requirement for characters in this peice

Entries will be accepted until March 8^th 2002. The judges will be considering the technical merits of the image as well as creativity. Try to be imaginative with the theme, even as restrictive as it is. You'd be surprised how much the textures, construction style, and lighting can effect your scene. Pay attention to the entire image. That includes lighting, camera position, and general composition.

If this isn't a genre that you are familiar with, and you need inspiration, these movies all contain similar craft: Aliens, Starship Troopers, Moon 44, Event Horizon and Final Fantasy. I'm positive there are others.

Rules and Conditions

It does have to be fully modeled, textured and rendered in Strata3D (any flavour), although final processing will have to be done in another app.

Entries will consist of a QTVR panorama (not a movie) under 500 kb, and a screenshot of your model in Strata3D.

Judging will be done by a panel of 7 or more judges. I will select the panel after the close of the challenge from among community artists that did not enter the contest. The judges will not know the names of the contestants.

The results of the challenge will not be changed for any reason. Once the winners have won, that's that. Please don't email me to tell me that you should have won.

Please, if you have any questions or suggestions regarding the contest, please email me at: michael@stratacafe.com

The benefits of the contest:

1) Winners will receive a charming banner to place on their website.

2) There will also be a smaller graphic, that looks a lot like the larger graphic, that will reside on the winners profile page on StrataCafe, forever and ever.

3) People can come to this page to get information on up and coming contests and view past winners (That would be you!)

4) You will receive the adoration of your friends and family, as well as most of the people who visit StrataCafe. (Note: Adoration not a guarantee.)

5) No real prizes this time (Sorry guys, you'll love the next prize though =)

Brief Instructions on making a QTVR panorama:

1) Set up the camera in your scene (In this case, inside your craft). Set the camera window size to "panorama" in the screen ratio pull-down.

2) Select the camera, and set the "type" to "panoramic" in the object palette. Also, set your Field of View quite high (115-145)

3) Open the render dialog using the plus menu on the camera window. In the "size" pulldown, select "panorama large" or "panorama small". Large would be for final pieces, but it's easier to test out small renders first.

4) Render with Raytracing or Raydiosity. Scanline won't work.

5) For the Mac heads, you'll have to rotate the render 90 degrees counter-clockwise in Photoshop or another image editor. The PC utility does not require this.

6) Download the program that suits your platform:

Mac: http://www.panoguide.com/publish/software/qtvrmakepano2.html

Windows: http://www.panoguide.com/software/utils/gocubic.html

This is going to sound a little mean, but try not to take it that way. I will attempt to help out users who are having difficulty making panoramas, but keep in mind that I receive hundreds of emails a day, and I have numerous other maintenance duties to perform that eat up my time. I encourage you to try posting any difficulty you might have to the StrataCafe forums first, as there are many users there (including me) who would be more than willing to help out.