Screenshot of the Month July 2011 [Winner announced!]

[Xaryl]

Promoting a bit of sportsmanship wouldn't hurt either, or most of the entries would look like this:

"High Fidelity Texture Mapping" - an awesome technique suitable for real time rendering


It is an image by Pedro Szekely which can be found on this wikipedia page.
Oh, and draw2DImage is your friend.

---

To XXChester:
I can understand your concern when someone basically renders a pre-made scene by someone else with nothing extra and with all the lightings pre-baked.
But like a monthly basketball game, the ultimate goal is not really about the technical winning anyways, so I wouldn't be too worried about how people play.

[hybrid]

Well, you joined far after that discussion, so you might not know about this. But this discussion was already made some month ago. After all we cannot guarantee that there's no cheating in the screenshots. Who knows if after doing the rendering some gimp'ing took place to make the shot look better? But we're asking for technical details and the actual rendering process for exactly this purpose. And there's also always the possibility to discuss the shots in the threads. And finally, all sources were named. I doubt that there was any confusion about what others contributed to the sscreenshot.
Your example here does not fulfill the ultimate rule of having the scene being rendered in Irrlicht, though, as the scene as presented is pre-rendered. If you want to show nice textures, you have to make sure that the scene is distinguishable from the texture. But yes, there are ways to make more of a screenshot by using nice graphics. But that's not bad, after all this is an arts competition. If we'd want a coders competition, we'd ask for nice code. Although, looking back on our apps competition two years ago, I must admit that better visual appearance also made better results.
So, what would your list of rules be then? Would you forbid the use of any prior art? Or only allow assets which the user made completely on his own? Even though I never made it, I could also create my own HDR rendering with photoshop and some images I made with my camera, and publish something similar to your example. Would it be allowed then, just because I made everything on my own? After all, some textures will almost always come from an external source, and if it's just the images from my camera. I guess we cannot be too picky here. Just apply some common sense and keep the competition rules as simple as possible.

[CuteAlien]

I would forbid the usage of assets copyrighted by someone else unless they have a license which specifically allows using them outside their original games. I don't think it's a good idea if content from commercial games is used.

[hybrid]

It's not a commercial bsp, it's just a freely available bsp file which is also shown in the Ogre3d examples. And the gta3 loader screenshot was also quite nice IMHO...

[CuteAlien]

If it's freely available I would be fine with it. I just wouldn't like if this is an original quake 3 level, if that's not the case I then well - I guess it's OK.

[Xaryl]

Look at all the trouble I caused before I even go to the moon
(No, not really, sorry no moon rocks )

First of all, it wasn't about the rules. Prior arts or outside resources are certainly fine.
I was just trying encourage everyone to look beyond rules and winning/losing.

The rediculous example above was just to show that everyone can submit something awesome that is
1. not meaningful to the submitter
2. not meaningful to Irrlicht

The above is only an extreme example, no one was doing that, but I understood (at least I think so xD) XXChester's concern, and it wouldn't be good if people steer to that direction.
I responded mainly because I felt bad that his/her opinion just got dismissed as a concern about legal issue (which I assume it wasn't why he/she brought it up).

---
p.s. The example does fulfill the listed rule "Only irrlicht renders allowed" because the definition of render is... well it doesn't matter, the point is not about the rules.

[XXChester]

I know what I say may not really matter here as I mostly just lurk these days, but personally I just feel that just because someone dropped a professionally made scene into Irrlicht, it shouldn't be valid. But oh well, I guess that seems to be okay, I will just continue to never vote for these entries.

[mongoose7]

I think the screenshot is from a post-processing implementation using the chiropteraDM map. If the author of the package is the same person who posted the screenshot then this would be really excellent. If not, it is plagiarism and falls into the same category as Xaryl's picture. (Well, the package belongs to tbw and the screenshot to Sio2, so ...)

But it depends on whether you accept screenshots from people who have downloaded an Irrlicht exectutable, run the application and taken a screenshot, or whether it needs some creative input. But I think the terms and conditions allow the former, so there is no issue.

Maybe the conditions for entry should be strengthened?

[sio2]

"evandromillian's DX11 driver with some fixes/tweaks and my own Irrlicht Quake3 BSP scene node. BSP map is ChiropteraDM by Alcatraz / Nunuk / Sock. "

Anyone wishing to recreate my submission can do so easily. All you need to do is:

1. Get evandromillian's DirectX 11 driver source code.
2. Fix it so it compiles.
3. Fix it so it runs.
4. Rewrite the shader handler so you actually have some usable shaders to work with - DX11 has no FFP.
5. Write your OWN Irrlicht Quake3 BSP scene node from scratch. Do not use the Irrlicht one that puts the polys in an octree and loses all the PVS info in the map - write your own that dynamically creates render lists based on what's visible from the camera frustum. Oh, and make sure you use the Irrlicht API so it's not just DX11 based and so you can choose between DX11, OpenGL or DX9 at runtime.
6. Plainly and clearly credit the authors of the map.

[Xaryl]

It really wasn't my intention to make accusation on anyone :s
I stood up because someone cared more than just the rules, but got entirely ignored by everyone else.

I mainly wanted to point out that "create awesome renders with Irrlicht" that follows the rule shouldn't be the only thing.
I think the current rules are fine; it shouldn't require a 10 pages long rules for such competition. (And I am sure there will still be exploits.)

sio2, I never thought your entry was bad; I also encourage everyone not to be too worried about other people's submissions.
To me, it is more about the general attitude for ourselves.

[mongoose7]

"evandromillian's DX11 driver with some fixes/tweaks and my own Irrlicht Quake3 BSP scene node. BSP map is ChiropteraDM by Alcatraz / Nunuk / Sock. "

Anyone wishing to recreate my submission can do so easily. All you need to do is:

Sorry. I guess your silence created a trap that I readily walked into.

[devsh]

I think each poster should point out what part of the render is his and what his actual input is. There is nothing wrong with using a doom3 map and the fat guy md5, but! there has to be something on top, for example if I am demonstrating a doom3 level loader and md5 loader, that is fine. If I wrote myself obviously.

Someone else's artwork also serves a purpose if I want to demonstrate my rendering techniques (lighting, post process).

Think we should all provide two screenshots... barebones and the entry, to help vote fairly. The first would be the scene loaded by irrlicht normally (no lighting, barebone render etc.) and without OUR OWN artwork (if you made a terrain yourself or a level), then the second is the full effect. This would show us how much OWN work has gone in.

Also it would be fairer to split the screenies into different categories, renderers (graphical effects programming), scenes and action(physics).