congrats to everyone, some really great looking work there. you're right foreverrendering, putting contact info or website on the final image would have been a good idea..i'm in the same boat as you...no worries
personally I was cracking up at a few of the WoW shirts they have at jinx.com. I'm hoping the GC will be valid there as well as the Blizz store, since they seem to be partnered up for WoW-wear.
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The secondary prize is pretty sweet! What are you guys going to do with your prize money?
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mudbox when it's out and i guess it's time to pay some billd
congrats to anyone who participated this challenge, great work, though i don't understand the decision in 3d character diablo, there definitely have been better chars.
Great job to all you winners. Saw some well deserved winners int here, so great job.
Really surprised at a couple of the other winners considering the quality of some of the other entries I saw here though. (Especially the Diablo Character (how in the fuck did that win over arsh?) and Warcraft environment.)
"Anyone have any idea what the judging criteria were?" -Vig
"Winners shall be chosen by Sponsor at its sole discretion based upon which entrants display the most (i) original, (ii) authentic and (iii) funny artistic expression, with equal weight being given to each criterion, that is based on the Blizzard Products." - Blizzard
I too am suprised that 2D pieces took every grand prize spot(except for cinematics, obviously) seeing as Blizzad appeared to emphasize that although they were accepting 2D artwork, they were mostly interested in 3D entries, with emphasis on low polycounts and hand painted textures. I guess judging crieria (iii) didnt really apply to many either.
The winner of the 3D Diablo character was not my favorite by a long shot. (Screenshots with toolbars and rulers in the image is just plain...well, I guess I dont have to expand on that).
My opinions aside, I just want to congratulate everyone! For those you who won...I can't begin to tell you how thrilled I am for you. And even for those of you who didn't...I'm equally as excited because you guys put forth such great entries and effort. Good job Polycounters!
Congrats to the Polycounters that won!
As for some of the winning entries... Well looks like I'm not the only one suprised. I have definately seen some better work on these forums that deserved the win. I guess better luck next year?
Nasty e-mail on the way Arsh!
Aye, I was thinking GoW the instant I looked at that picture. It's a great piece of work, but since it's so similar to GoW I'd have though it would have put the judges off.
Aside from big dudes in heavy armor wearing a bandana or some other tight hat, I don't see too many similarities. The crotch light looks a little ridiculous to me though. Some nice work all around, but like others have said, I think there were some better entries than the ones that won.
well looking at conceptart.org entries i'd say the competition for 2d stuff was WAY more intense than the 3d stuff. I think also its because they probably let the game teams decide the winners and they just picked what would work best with the specs they've been working with, so mostly all diffuse stuff, arh's diablo totally blew that diablo character winner thing out of the watter... like... SERIOUSLY... wtf? i dunno if blizzard has a thing against normal maps, like maybe its just not cool to make normal mapped characters there and maybe normal maps are just cheap hacks i dunno LOL.
I'd say with all the prizes and stuff i'm actually pretty surprized there wasn't more really badass work. I think the reason is because they didn't have a place for WIPs, like i guess some forums had threads and stuff about it, but it wasn't like the dominance war, which was just really fun, almost every day of the contest there was some new stuff popping up and you could see the progress of everyone's entries etc.
So i dunno, i think this probably could have been a much better contest, but oh well i can't wait for the next dominance war
lol its funny cause i was seriously considering not normal mapping my character cause i figured bliz would like it better but a few friends suggested i do it anyway. Oh well Congrats to all the Winners! Some really great work!
Congrats everyone! You people got cheated on the Diablo entries though, the Tristram church was amazing, and Arsh's Diablo kicked ass. Ohh well. Their loss.
It's ironic...SEKNeox's starcraft 2 scene was criticized because his normal maps didn't really look as if they were contributing much detail and the Diffuse was doing all the work.
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It's ironic...SEKNeox's starcraft 2 scene was criticized because his normal maps didn't really look as if they were contributing much detail and the Diffuse was doing all the work.
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first of all call me neox, the nickname has just already been taken
second, this is simply wrong, there definitely is a difference between the normalmapped and the diffuse only version BUT the diffuse version could work on it's own (on older pcs i.e.) and the details and shading in the diffuse is needed because of the large distances you have to one model in a RTS game, a normalmap itself and only a simple diffuse wouldn't have the same effect. It's all about the normal gameview, which is in 99% from far away and not the closeups. The Normalmap should always be just an addition and not the one who's doing the job, someone with a weaker system shouldn't be forced to have such ugly graphics as it was the case in Doom3, this game looked uuuuuuugly without normalmaps...
haha shimmer i was kinda thinking the same thing, not to sound too egotistical, but this goes across the board because there were definitely some radical entries that got no love at all, and i was thinking maybe blizzard didn't want to pick any winners that could actually make the games coming out look bad. so for instance if pior's cow knight looked cooler than a real knight in diablo 3 then it might not be such a good idea to choose it as a winner, cause people will be let down that the actual game doesn't look that good. with concept and cinematic models you have more freedom because the blizzard cinematics are always top notch and 2d as well, but in their case while they add to the final game they are not what the player sees 99.99 percent of the time.
i have gotten lots of very nice PM's from you guys showing love, but i am not bitter. i have gotten lots of nice job offers from the entry and i never really wanted to work at blizzard anyway.
Yeah me and per were having a similar conversation. It looks like they just picked what would be consistant with models in thier games, so thiers no way they would pick anything thats obviously better. It sucks, a lot of good entries got ignored. Very disapointing.
you know what that makes sense... In fact it makes allot of sense. It makes me sad to think that they have to shit on people who are better than them just to keep people from realizing that their games really are using 5 year old tech.
BTW i Still would like to see that battle i was talking about before.
To be fair, they did insinuate a number of times in the rules that they were looking for work in a similar style and with similar constraints to what they use in their games. I don't think its any real surprise that the fancy normal mapped characters get much love, as utterly brilliant as many of them were.
I think the Diablo winner is a very nice model. The skin and head detail seem to need more detail to fit with the armor, however. The one nice thing about it is that the artist read the rules. The poly limit was 5000 depending on the complexity of the model. That last part is important. Ive seen some nice models of basic humanoids that should have been only 3500 polys but the artist decided to make the head ~2000 polys. If I were a judge, I would totally ding the entry for that.
I do think the Diablo model posted here on polycount was terrific. I do think that Diablo, being a boss monster, would merit a 5000 poly count. So I dont think it got dinged for that. The only critique I have for it is the pose is way more like a regal human than a monster like Diablo. Diablo from Diablo 2 acted apelike so the pose just doesnt fit.
My character entry were ~3300 and my "boss" entry was well below 5000 (~4400).
My main complaint is with the grand prize winners. It seems they heavily favored 2d concept art over some excellent 3d entries.
Oh and man I should have done an environment but I got married and went on my honeymoon during that time. That ate up 3+ weeks of the contest for sure.
It would also be cool if they posted a sort of "best of the rest" webpage.
arsh: yeah i don't know about that lol... that may be a little far fetched, i'm sure diablo 3 characters are going to look kickass, i mean they have SouL... and god know how many other really good artists that u never hear about around here... after further examination that diablo winner thing isn't THAT bad... but the face is pretty atrocious looking, which is why i personally didn't really dig it at all, nice metal work tho. and the dude spent absolutely no time on the presentation which is kind of weird ... but also goes to show just how very few people entered... i thought this was going to be alot bigger than it turned out to be.
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...but I got married and went on my honeymoon during that time. That ate up 3+ weeks of the contest for sure.
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I like how you stated that your honeymoon "ATE" up contest time. HAHAHA! After two complete entries, you wanted to do a third? Gee whiz dude, HONEYMOON! SEX FOR THE WIN!
But yeah...
I echo all comments previously said, unless I disagree :P It really sounded like they had a preference for lowpoly stuff, and then all the winners are 2d things? I'd rather be sailing! (Kill yourself if you know what I'm talking about)
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you know what that makes sense... In fact it makes allot of sense. It makes me sad to think that they have to shit on people who are better than them just to keep people from realizing that their games really are using 5 year old tech.
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yeah totally makes sense, do you even realize that this a punch in the face of everyone who won on that challenge, well thanks we all just won because our work so much sucks that it's not good enough to represent the work of Blizzard... i don't understand the decision on the character of the diablo category either, because there have been at least 3 entries from here that where better (just my opinion), but the entry that won isn't as bad as you guys are implying, ok the skin parts could need some more work, but the other parts are well done... but thanks anyways i guess everyone who won on that contest is really proud that he made it because his work was ugly enough to win a prize...
All the winners are pretty damn kickass, it all comes down to artistic preference of the judges and I think in all regards the pieces are justifiable. Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone else for the awesome entries, makes me feel crappy that I ended up not entering. Ah well, next year!!!
The one thing I found odd was that there (besides the 3d starcraft scene) was no entries that won that emphasized normal mapping at all. Seems pretty slanted, I wonder if Blizzard will care for normal maps any time soon...
neox, but what i said inst a slap in your face, you won because your work looked like theirs and didn't look like it needed the normal map because your diffuse was so good. On the other hand it is a slap in the face to those who made great looking art but were tossed just for the fact that they were using normal maps and you could really tell. By "really tell" i mean allot of the look of the art came from the normal map and spec map.
I get why they chose who they chose, i just think it should have been stated that they were looking for diffuse only models for the real time comp.
It does seem they had a bias against normal mapping in all the 3d categories save for the cinematics one. I believe in the description for that one, they stressed for you to go crazy with Z-brush.
They can justify this as warcraft's art style is definitely not consistent with normal mapped art. However, I hope they weren't expecting the same realtime 3d standards of warcraft for Starcraft and Diablo. SC and Diablo have a much more realistic style than WC and I feel they cant fault entries that used normal mapping as it is consistent with those games style.
I would like to add that if anyone has looked at the screenshots for Burning Crusade or is lucky enough to be in the beta, its easy to see that Blizzard is not hurting for realtime 3d artists by any stretch. So this business of purposefully disqualifying entries that are too good is nonsense.
great job to everyone who won here. im echoing everyone but i wish they had a runner up page.... i mean the pumpkin carving contest has 28 runner ups... thats just GAY, we all worked harder and we get the shaft.
I would have liked to see a runner up gallery as well
Did anyone else get their prizes in the mail yet? Mine just showed up this morning. The print is a lot bigger than I thought it would be! I barely had a chance to look over it, because I had to leave for work. I'll have to see if I can locate Fausto's signature though, I'm a big fan of his work
Replies
- BoBo
The secondary prize is pretty sweet! What are you guys going to do with your prize money?
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mudbox when it's out and i guess it's time to pay some billd
congrats to anyone who participated this challenge, great work, though i don't understand the decision in 3d character diablo, there definitely have been better chars.
Really surprised at a couple of the other winners considering the quality of some of the other entries I saw here though. (Especially the Diablo Character (how in the fuck did that win over arsh?) and Warcraft environment.)
Arsh, sorry to hear you didn't win, I'm not sure what they where looking for? Anyone have any idea what the judging criteria where?
Anyway, big congratulations to the winners here. You're all most deserving of the praise and prizes.
"Winners shall be chosen by Sponsor at its sole discretion based upon which entrants display the most (i) original, (ii) authentic and (iii) funny artistic expression, with equal weight being given to each criterion, that is based on the Blizzard Products." - Blizzard
I too am suprised that 2D pieces took every grand prize spot(except for cinematics, obviously) seeing as Blizzad appeared to emphasize that although they were accepting 2D artwork, they were mostly interested in 3D entries, with emphasis on low polycounts and hand painted textures. I guess judging crieria (iii) didnt really apply to many either.
The winner of the 3D Diablo character was not my favorite by a long shot. (Screenshots with toolbars and rulers in the image is just plain...well, I guess I dont have to expand on that).
My opinions aside, I just want to congratulate everyone! For those you who won...I can't begin to tell you how thrilled I am for you. And even for those of you who didn't...I'm equally as excited because you guys put forth such great entries and effort. Good job Polycounters!
As for some of the winning entries... Well looks like I'm not the only one suprised. I have definately seen some better work on these forums that deserved the win. I guess better luck next year?
Nasty e-mail on the way Arsh!
-caseyjones
I'm suprised the judges missed that.
-caseyjones
The crotch light looks a little ridiculous to me though.
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Yeah, too small.
I'd say with all the prizes and stuff i'm actually pretty surprized there wasn't more really badass work. I think the reason is because they didn't have a place for WIPs, like i guess some forums had threads and stuff about it, but it wasn't like the dominance war, which was just really fun, almost every day of the contest there was some new stuff popping up and you could see the progress of everyone's entries etc.
So i dunno, i think this probably could have been a much better contest, but oh well i can't wait for the next dominance war
No normals map goodness... =/ one first prize 3D dang!
Arsh's FTW!
I would like to view all the other entries if possible, not an option huh?
You people got cheated on the Diablo entries though, the Tristram church was amazing...
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The Tristram Chuch got best cinematic environment.
Brothers?
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Clearly they are separate. One is facing left while the other is facing right! Have you no discerning eye!?
Humm they do look similar, but I don't think anything hinky is going on deeper than maybe influence.
It's ironic...SEKNeox's starcraft 2 scene was criticized because his normal maps didn't really look as if they were contributing much detail and the Diffuse was doing all the work.
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first of all call me neox, the nickname has just already been taken
second, this is simply wrong, there definitely is a difference between the normalmapped and the diffuse only version BUT the diffuse version could work on it's own (on older pcs i.e.) and the details and shading in the diffuse is needed because of the large distances you have to one model in a RTS game, a normalmap itself and only a simple diffuse wouldn't have the same effect. It's all about the normal gameview, which is in 99% from far away and not the closeups. The Normalmap should always be just an addition and not the one who's doing the job, someone with a weaker system shouldn't be forced to have such ugly graphics as it was the case in Doom3, this game looked uuuuuuugly without normalmaps...
I guess the Diablo Character would put Blizzard to big shame..
i have gotten lots of very nice PM's from you guys showing love, but i am not bitter. i have gotten lots of nice job offers from the entry and i never really wanted to work at blizzard anyway.
"The reason none of us won any prizes is because we were too good!"
BTW i Still would like to see that battle i was talking about before.
I do think the Diablo model posted here on polycount was terrific. I do think that Diablo, being a boss monster, would merit a 5000 poly count. So I dont think it got dinged for that. The only critique I have for it is the pose is way more like a regal human than a monster like Diablo. Diablo from Diablo 2 acted apelike so the pose just doesnt fit.
My character entry were ~3300 and my "boss" entry was well below 5000 (~4400).
My main complaint is with the grand prize winners. It seems they heavily favored 2d concept art over some excellent 3d entries.
Oh and man I should have done an environment but I got married and went on my honeymoon during that time. That ate up 3+ weeks of the contest for sure.
It would also be cool if they posted a sort of "best of the rest" webpage.
oh well dom war 2 ftw
...but I got married and went on my honeymoon during that time. That ate up 3+ weeks of the contest for sure.
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I like how you stated that your honeymoon "ATE" up contest time. HAHAHA! After two complete entries, you wanted to do a third? Gee whiz dude, HONEYMOON! SEX FOR THE WIN!
But yeah...
Dominance War 2... BRING IT!
-caseyjones
I echo all comments previously said, unless I disagree :P It really sounded like they had a preference for lowpoly stuff, and then all the winners are 2d things? I'd rather be sailing! (Kill yourself if you know what I'm talking about)
you know what that makes sense... In fact it makes allot of sense. It makes me sad to think that they have to shit on people who are better than them just to keep people from realizing that their games really are using 5 year old tech.
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yeah totally makes sense, do you even realize that this a punch in the face of everyone who won on that challenge, well thanks we all just won because our work so much sucks that it's not good enough to represent the work of Blizzard... i don't understand the decision on the character of the diablo category either, because there have been at least 3 entries from here that where better (just my opinion), but the entry that won isn't as bad as you guys are implying, ok the skin parts could need some more work, but the other parts are well done... but thanks anyways i guess everyone who won on that contest is really proud that he made it because his work was ugly enough to win a prize...
The one thing I found odd was that there (besides the 3d starcraft scene) was no entries that won that emphasized normal mapping at all. Seems pretty slanted, I wonder if Blizzard will care for normal maps any time soon...
I get why they chose who they chose, i just think it should have been stated that they were looking for diffuse only models for the real time comp.
They can justify this as warcraft's art style is definitely not consistent with normal mapped art. However, I hope they weren't expecting the same realtime 3d standards of warcraft for Starcraft and Diablo. SC and Diablo have a much more realistic style than WC and I feel they cant fault entries that used normal mapping as it is consistent with those games style.
I would like to add that if anyone has looked at the screenshots for Burning Crusade or is lucky enough to be in the beta, its easy to see that Blizzard is not hurting for realtime 3d artists by any stretch. So this business of purposefully disqualifying entries that are too good is nonsense.
For what its worth, these are my entries:
It sucks, a lot of good entries got ignored. Very disapointing.
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I have to agree, Respect to all the winners.. but my respect for Blizzard has dropped a little (Not that they care anyway
Did anyone else get their prizes in the mail yet? Mine just showed up this morning. The print is a lot bigger than I thought it would be! I barely had a chance to look over it, because I had to leave for work. I'll have to see if I can locate Fausto's signature though, I'm a big fan of his work