Hi Octaners,

EDIT: This competition is now closed. Thanks to everyone for the enormous amount of submissions we've had. We will announce the winners tomorrow, wednesday at ~9pm CET on the website.

The fastest Unbiased Renderer ever is out since a few days now and now's your chance to compete.
For this first challenge, there will be no specific theme, it’s up to you, so just let your imagination work and give us the best of your art.

By participating to this challenge each competitor agrees that his/her submitted images may be used for promotional purposes on the Octane web site gallery, eg displayed as featured images.

The competition is being managed by enricocerica.

Who can participate ?
Everybody except the members of the Jury and the Beta Testing Group.

Rules:
You may produce and publish as many submissions as you want.
The submitted rendering must be made exclusively with Octane Render.
You must use the current Demo version which is publically available on our site.
Submitted images must have a minimum resolution of 1024 px wide and 512 px high,
but we will prefer images at higher resolutions.

Postproduction is allowed only :

. to fix lighting issues and fireflies
. to add glare and bloom
. to add chromatic abberration
. noise reduction if needed

You cannot add any other image part in postproduction.

Note that if you use excessive noise-reduction and your submission ends up looking blotchy as a result,
this will be taken into account during examination by the jury, and you're image might end up not being chosen.

The challenge will last for 3+ weeks.

A jury composed by 5 persons chosen among our beta testers will vote and select the winners.

Practically:
Your images should be uploaded in this thread.
You can change them until the thread is closed.
Include in your submission post:
your Name, technical details (polygons, rendertime, etc...) and a short description/inspiration/motivation or idea about your submission.
Add your full credits on the image as small text on the bottom.
Include a screenshot of you working on the image in Octane Render. (this proves it was rendered in Octane Render).

Edit : Don't post your wip here, create one single entry and update it with the new images. You should be able to delete an image and to replace it by a new one.

Prizes :
1st place : One Life-time Octane license
2nd and 3rd place : One Octane v1.0 license

The competition starts now, Sunday 17 January 2010 and will close on Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 20:00 (20pm) GMT+1 (Central European Time)

Good luck to everyone

Great - all the Windows users get a head start...

Yeah,

Unfortunately there is'nt much we can do about that...

Linux users can prepare a nice scene in a 3d modeling app,
then finetune and render when the linux version is available,
which will be available in 2-3 days from now.

Radiance

Hey,

we've decided to update the competition and make it 2 weeks long,
with regards to the linux users.

Radiance

Not really my point, but you are right - nothing to do about it, as its already announced.
Non-Windows user's will just have to deal with a longer "finetune" time, as we have not gotten to play at all yet.

On the brighter side, I have just installed my new GTX 285 and am eagerly awaiting the linux demo. I have also already figured the cost of a license into my budget

[EDIT] just saw your next post - I guess a Mac user might pipe up now

Maybe radiance could add an optional small Octane watermark to Monday's demo update with "I am a mac gpu'. 'I am a pc gpu' or 'I am a linux gpu' in small letters..
If people have to show the watermark for the competition then he can give those different users fair time to particpate. 2 weeks each

Nah - I feel his pain. You cannot please everyone. The only 100% fair way, would be not to post any demo until all versions are ready. I personally wouldn't want that either.

Well look I offered an aspirin and sympathy...

don't worry,
linux users will have plenty of time to get submissions ready within the updated target date of the competition,
it's 2 weeks. if things go well, linux users can use the demo in 2-3 days, so might as well start working on your model,
and you can render it soon.

Radiance

Already got a scene ready to go! Just worried about material and tweak time. Two weeks is enough though