New User Challenge Ideas Thread

DAZ_ann0314

Please post to this thread any ideas/thoughts you have on changes or ideas you feel would make this challenge more fun or engaging. You may also include topics you feel may be missing, or even changes to the order you feel may be good for learning or any other ideas I've not covered. It is our intention to revamp the challenge a bit and I can think of no better people to ask than those that have participated in past months. 

We thank you so much for your participation and we cannot wait to see what ideas you may have 

Aki3d

Well I have participated in the past challenges but the people who haven't should post here to explain why they don't like it anymore.
I'm quiet shure that it will not change this year. I can just speculate about the reason nearly no one is interested anymore.
Perhaps the whole idea of "beginners" getting help to become better doesn't work anymore.
Perhaps having a different technical "theme" every month doesn't work anymore.
Perhaps all the beginners doing AI now.
There is no real interaction between the members. I remember when I was still posting my renders in the gallery.
I gave it up because there was nearly never an interesting comment. 
If I'm right, there are 3 different contests here every month.
The new user challenge, the freebie challenge and the rrr stuff.
The new user challenge seems to be the least popular, which I don't understand.
The rrr challenge made never a lot of sense to me. You have to spend much more time to generate and find and document the chosen products
for your meaningless "funny" render than for your actual 3d work. I have participated a few times and also won something but I found it very anoying. The freeby challenge is a nice idea but comes also with a lot of extra work. 
Perhaps a simple render challenge without any technical specification, just a theme like nature, urban life, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, comedy, animals, realism etc. would have engaged more people.
And of course a higher prize would make the people being more interest in a challenge.
All this is just a speculation.
For me it is fine the way it is, just with more people being interested and commenting and asking questions.
A category "animated gifs" I would like to have, but there is always a problem with the preview. Sometimes it works and sometimes not.
And a winners decision in between a reasonable timeframe is also much appreciated.
A decision which comes a few month later or never can be something very annoying.

 

 

 

Alias52

My problem has been a matter of time and a more than a bit of motivation. I have really enjoyed entering these challenges over the years and engaging with other artists. I would love to have a bit more time to join in with some challenges but my work flow gets very interrupted until the Summer. I would think that the rise of AI has dented the rate of new users entering but there are definitely people out there who are giving it a go for the first time. Maybe some people posting for the first few times could be contacted by Mods and pointed this way. I agree with Aki that there may need to be more freestyle challenges on a theme. If enough are interested, the excellent tutorials can be used by those interested in pushing a bit further. I have learnt so much participating that perhaps there can be a, "Pushing the boundaries" award if people go above and beyond. Generating interest is key to success after all. 

lina.catfish

Hello!

In January, I thought of participating for the second time - and when didn't because I had too less time. Very banal reasons with which the challanges themself have nothing to do. Anyway.
There are two problems I see: DS depends on assets. There is no alternative if you want to create something. If you're starting out with 3D and DS is your first contact, it takes time to collect stuff, or you just need money to buy it.
So maybe it would be interesting to do a kitbash challenge with items from different origins and formats – how to import, scale, texture. AI is relevant for people who want *some outcome*. For process-oriented craftsmen, AI will never be an alternative. And I doubt that there are many people interested in AI "art" if it is clear that it is AI-generated. Or do any of you remember the last big world chess championship of supercomputers? Who play so much better than humans, faster and more intelligent?

Second: The step-by-step challenges – starting with composition and later with more specialised DS functions – are a good idea when all new users start in January. But they don't. Opening up the challenges to themes instead of special features could be great. "Could" because there are many 3D challenges that have nothing more than themes. Does the world really need another one?

DAZ_ann0314

Thank you to those who replied.  It is appreciated. I'll discuss some of this with the team over the coming months and see if we can revamp things some to give more time and possibly add in more free months.

 

The overall goal of the challenge has always been to try to help people learn, and we want to keep that goal, but there is always more than one way to get to a destination.