Special Effect Contest #3 - Results

[Pyritie]

Hive Workshop Special Effect Contest #3 RESULTS!

Sorry about the delay, guys! It's all shaman's fault!


66% judging, 33% poll
(Pyritie's score + Shamanyouranus' score)*(2/3) + (votes/(total votes))*(33.333) = (score)/100

Dan van Ohllus

Effectiveness: 8/15 - Aura of death is simple and effective. The boiling ones are simple but also very busy. They could be useful in rare situations but I can't really see them being used very often. Smite is kinda... generic, I have to say. The execution could be better than just a simple flash and some particles at the bottom.
Texture choices: 6/10 - Appropriate for all of them. The clouds in Retribution seem kinda eh though. SmiteTarget could've had some more interesting ones too.
Geometry: 6/10 - Aura of death is fine. BHW/BS/BSH's particles seem kinda spammed - why are there so many? It looks too busy. Corruption also uses quite a lot of particles for what it is, too.
Creativity: 3/5 - Aura of death is kinda a generic thing. Never seen a "boiling" effect before -- they could be useful if you want to cover up the ground with something but I'm not sure why it's "boiling". Retribution is nice. SmiteTarget seems kinda blah.
Mechanics: 4/5 - Aura of death matches blizzard effects well. Boiling ones seem a bit too busy.
Other: 5/5 - Particles stay above the ground appropriately and stuff. Good sound event objects, etc.
Total: 32

Effectiveness: 9/15
All the models look alright and they have a very warcrafty look to them. But most of them are quite simple, and the Boiling models are pretty overpowering.
Textures: 4/10
The textures are pretty bland and generic. I would have liked to see more daring in the texture choice.
Geometry: 6/10
All around, the models look fine, but the particles look kind of random. At times they look as if you just winged it.
Creativity: 4/5
Very interesting concepts, especially the boiling holy water. Some more variety would have been nice, though.
Mechanics: 2/5
The models work fairly well, but you need to re-calculate the extents for the boiling models, the particles disappear if the center of the model isn't on the screen.
Other: 4/5
Great use of lighting, and I'm glad to see a model that strayed from this contest's trend of red and black.
Total: 29

(32 + 29)*(2/3) + (6/56)*33.333 = 44.2380595

JetFangInferno

Effectiveness: 15/15 - These all get their point across very well without being too flashy about it, yet they aren't oversimplified. Would've been nice to see some more effects out of you though
Texture choices: 9/10 - They all use a wide variety of textures that combine nicely. Although they also still have a lot of unused textures left over that should be removed.
Geometry: 9/10 - They all use their geometry very well - EmpyreanSigil has no particles because it doesn't need any (and the geometry you have shows that it doesn't need them). MementoMori uses a lot of particles but it makes great use of them to create a beautiful effect without being overly spammy.
Creativity: 5/5 - Using blue and red for TrinusTenebrae was definitely original. MementoMori looks hellish without being overtly firey, which is nice.
Mechanics: 4.5/5 - They all fit ingame well although they all only really work for ultimates or cinematics.
Other: 4/5 - No sound event objects :/
Total: 46.5

Effectiveness: 12/15
They look fantastic, and definitely capture the theme of the contest.
Textures: 8/10
A decent selection of textures, but you definitely put them to good use.
Geometry: 10/10
No particle goes to waste, each one looks great and well thought out, and the ribbon emitters are phenomenal.
Creativity: 3/5
Not the most creative concepts, but you did execute your concepts very well innovatively.
Mechanics: 2/5
Most of them work perfectly, but you need to recalculate the extents on the trinus tenebrae model.
Other: 4/5
Everything is well rounded and looks great.
Total: 39

(46.5 + 39)*(2/3) + (11/56)*33.333 = 63.5475536

s4nji

Effectiveness: 6/15 - Dark shield aura is a bit too bright. Holy blessing is kinda interesting but is also too bright - the light "pillar" and rotating planes should be more transparent. Blessed sword is good, I think. Just needs its particle count lowered a bit. The heals are also too bright and use too many particles.
Texture choices: 3/10 - A lot of these only use one or two textures, making them rather dull.
Geometry: 4/10 - The stars on dark shield aura could be bigger and have its particle count lowered. It's also kinda flashy for an aura.
Creativity: 1/5 - You only went with the traditional yellow and purple for all of your effects. They're also very simple -- while they might be useful, they look a bit too basic. Dark shield just looks like that mana shield ability, but purple (that one the naga hero has).
Mechanics: 3/5 - They fit reasonably well. Most of them are just too flashy.
Other: 3/5 - The auras in Holy Blessing aren't centered. Some of these need sound event objects.
Total: 20

Effectiveness: 6/15
Your models seemed to be much too simple. Your darkness models look more arcane than dark.
Textures: 2/10
Not much variety. The same overused generic glow and rune textures we've all seen too many times before.
Geometry: 3/10
Nothing special. Overly simple particle movement.
Creativity: 1/5
Kinda boring, overused concepts. Flash here, generic glow there.
Mechanics: 1/5
All of your entries need recalculated extents
Other: 2/5
Nothing to special about any of them.
Total: 15

(20 + 15)*(2/3) + (4/56)*33.333 = 25.7142619

Thrikodius

Effectiveness: 13/15 - You did a great job with these. They make great use of geometry without relying on particles and use symbols people are already familiar with to give their point across. Some of the warp ones are somewhat simple though, such as dark clouds & purple ribbons.
Texture choices: 9/10 - They use appropriate textures. Not too many, not too few.
Geometry: 8/10 - The mesh on Curse needs its normals recalculated. The unwrap of the inside of the hand looks bad as well.
Creativity: 5/5 - Using real-world symbols to convey meaning was a great idea. I especially loved Sin. The warp ones are kinda simple though but they're also effective. I guess there isn't really much you can do about that though - "warp" in general is a pretty fuzzy term.
Mechanics: 5/5 - They work ingame well without being too flashy yet still get their point across.
Other: 5/5 - No problems here.
Total: 45

Effectiveness: 10/15
All of the models look nice, and their purposes are pretty easy to understand from a glance. But nothing really had that "wow" effect.
Textures: 6/10
Somewhat generic textures, but used very nicely.
Geometry: 9/10
Very nice meshes, great ribbon emitters, and no particles see to be wasted.
Creativity: 5/5
Very creative ideas for the sin and curse models. I especially liked the shadow and holy warp models.
Mechanics: 2/5
The warp models require a re-calculation of extents.
Other: 5/5
Great use of sounds, and you had no fear of using organic meshes.
Total: 37

(45 + 37)*(2/3) + (2/56)*33.333 = 55.857131

WILL THE ALMIGHTY

Effectiveness: 14/15 - These all look fantastic and you know it. Glad to see you didn't just go with purple although some more color variation would've been nice instead of just red/black for shadow and pale yellow for holy. I also think the stuff at the end of Doomsday shouldn't last as long as it does - you could've separated it into a Stand anim so people could have it last as long as they wanted.
Texture choices: 9/10 - Good texture usage here... I dunno what to say here, really
Geometry: 9/10 - Some of the particle counts could be reduced. For example, in Desecrate, why do you need so much of the foam texture? It isn't all that visible. In Doomsday you could've limited the red flare texture's angle so some of it didn't just go straight underground.
Creativity: 4.5/5 - You did some good work here but I wouldn't exactly say most of these are all that original; they're more like "high-res" revamps of common blizzard effects. (I guess you could say Judgement is a revamp of some long casting spell or a building birth effect) That's not a bad thing at all though! Also I like the use of the foam texture for the firework effect in Genesis.
Mechanics: 5/5 - Some of them are kinda heavy on the particle count but they're all good.
Other: 5/5 - CRAB IS SPY
Total: 46.5

Effectiveness: 13/15
Everything looks just great, and they fit the theme perfectly.
Textures: 9/10
Nice texture choice, and you manage to keep the textures looking nice and crisp even when they're flying around as particles.
Geometry: 9/10
All the particles look great. Amazing use of different particle techniques (ei. doomsday and judgement).
Creativity: 3/5
Pretty generic concepts, flashy explosions and beams of light. But you manage to keep them looking new.
Mechanics: 5/5
Everything works just fine.
Other: 4/5
Great use of lighting, different textures, and clever use of filter modes.
Total: 43

(46.5 + 43)*(2/3) + (33/56)*33.333 = 79.3093274

1st - WILL THE ALMIGHTY

2nd - JetFangInferno

3rd - Thrikodius

 

[Thrikodius]

WTF!? Third place? Now that was unexpected...
The winner was obvious from the start though. Gratz to WILL and JetFangInferno

 

[D a w n]

Originally Posted by that furfag -->Lulz

congratulation to the winners

 

[Deolrin]

Congratulations to the winners!

 

[shamanyouranus]

Congrats everyone. I was very surprised by the amount of extent problems. >:\

 

[anarchianbedlam]

Congrats to the winners. and congrates to shamanyourblahblah, better extremely late than never. Cant wait for the next competition >.>

 

[The Panda]

Congratulations ~

 

[RED BARON]

Congrats to all participants and the winners. Everyone did a great job and most praises to Thrikodius for standing up to the titans

Neat

 

[Thrikodius]

Congrats to all participants and the winners. Everyone did a great job and most praises to Thrikodius for standing up to the titans

Neat

The fail was with me.

 

[s4nji]

Congrats, to the winners!

 

[supertoinkz]

grats will, I also really like your submission
lol shamanyourbutt

 

[Kuhneghetz]

I congratulate all the participants (including me) for entering the contests, and the winners for coming up in higher ranks.

You need to re-calculate the extents for the boiling models, the particles disappear if the center of the model isn't on the screen.

How do you do that?



And I disagree with Pyritie about my particle effects being spammy, since I've attempted to let each effect model use as low amount of emitters as possible.

 

[Pyritie]

You could easily use half the number of particles on your bubbly ones

 

[shamanyouranus]

How do you do that?

In magos, you go into Edit, then click calculate extents.
It's really simple, which is why I'm so surprised nearly all of you messed up on that.

 

[Pyritie]

In magos, you go into Edit, then click calculate extents.
It's really simple, which is why I'm so surprised nearly all of you messed up on that.

I don't think that works if your model is just made of particles though... correct me if I'm wrong

 

[shamanyouranus]

No, i'm pretty sure it works with just particles too. It just calculates the farthest point any given particle could go to, or something. But, yeah, it should work with just particles.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I don't think that works if your model is just made of particles though... correct me if I'm wrong

No, if you only use particles it corrupts the extensions and so far I've lost a dozen models to that awful glitch. You can't fix it by replacing the extensions afterwards either.

So set them yourself (you can just look at other models and guess what the extensions should be) or add some piece of geometry or a bone (not sure about bones, though).

 

[Thrikodius]

In magos, you go into Edit, then click calculate extents.
It's really simple, which is why I'm so surprised nearly all of you messed up on that.

I didn't think I had to do that since they were'nt clickable models. I usually calculate extents when collision shapes mess up.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Collision shapes and whether the model is clickable or not doesn't have anything to do with extents. :/

 

[Thrikodius]

What I'm trying to say is that when I make a unit for example I want it to be clickable so that you can select it. So I add a collision shape but sometimes that doesn't work so I remove the collision shape and calculate the extents and it works just as well.
But since I didn't make units for the contest, I did neither.

I'd say there's something about the extents that I have yet to learn

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Weird. I guess they have something to do with each other then.

Extents are mostly used so the model doesn't disappear on the edges of the screen.

 

[Pyritie]

omg prizes already?!?!?!?!?!?1?1!?!//1

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Pyritie 1
Shaman 0