Competition Timeframe

Work on entries to the competition may start immediately once these rules are published. Submissions will be accepted from September 15 2004 to midnight January 31, 2005, US Pacific Time. The winners will be selected by a judging panel and will be announced during the LinuxWorld conference in Boston (February 14-17 2005).

Registration

Registering with the competition will require you to provide the following information:

1. Your real name
2. Your email address
3. Your country of residence

Your email address will not be made public. Your real name will only be made public if no nickname is given (see below). Your country of residence will be made public.

Optionally the following information can be given and, with the exception of your telephone/fax number, will be made available to the public after the end of the competition:

4. Public email address (obsfucation permitted)
5. Telephone or fax number
6. Age bracket
7. Nickname
8. Number of years experience with POV-Ray
9. Short bio

Submission

1. Each entry must be submitted via the Web form on the competition website.

2. An entry may not have been created by:

   1. Employees of our sponsors or people otherwise associated with them, or

   2. People participating in organizing the competition, in particular members of the screening and judging panel.

3. A maximum of three entries is allowed per person. Collaboration entries are allowed but they have to be submitted under the name of one person, who is then the only one eligible to receive a prize. Additionally, all collaborators must have registered with the competition and their registration ID's listed on the submission form in the provided location. A collaborative entry is counted as an entry for all collaborators for the purpose of counting the number of entries made by each person.

4. Submitting an entry will require you to provide the following additional information:

   1. The entry image (the rules for the image can be found below).

   2. A title for the entry, a short description, a short 'how it was made'.

   3. Keywords for search on the competition site.

   4. A complete list of all tools (hard and software) that were used to create the image including all third-party data files used and all own data files that were created prior to the contest.

5. Optionally the following information can be given and will be made available to the public after the end of the competition:

   1. A long description of the image, a longer 'making of'.

   2. The source code for the image.

   3. Larger renders or different views of the scene.

Images

1. To be accepted in the competition an entry has to be rendered with POV-Ray.

2. It must have been created for this competition. Pre-existing works (or trivial modifications of pre-existing works) are not allowed. Winning images will be available for public inspection for a period of two weeks after the announcement of the winners before the winners will be eligible to collect their prizes.

3. You are free to select your own topic for the image, subject to the guidelines given in the rules and competitors agreement. However be aware that competition management may reject any image that they consider to be inappropriate or illegal. Additionally note that competition management is not obliged to display your image to the public, regardless of whether or not it is rejected.

4. Each image submitted has to be the direct result of a POV-Ray render. No post processing of any kind is permitted. The images have to be submitted in JPEG format. (Note: converting from another image format to JPEG is not considered 'post processing').

5. Use of modified unofficial versions of POV-Ray is allowed if the version used is (and can be verified as having been) a publicly available unofficial version (which complies with the POV-Ray license) that was available on or before August 3, 2004. If you do use an unofficial version it is your responsibility to ensure it is of sufficient quality to allow the competition organisers to use it to re-render your scene in case your entry wins (see below). If they cannot get it to work or cannot reproduce your scene using their copy of the unofficial version your entry will be disqualified.

6. You must not use any feature of POV-Ray (whether official or patched) to circumvent the intent of any of the other rules (especially the post processing rule and the requirement of the image to be rendered with POV-Ray).

7. You can optionally submit a PNG image with alpha channel - of the same size as the main image - which contains a signature that will be applied to the image before it is published on the website. The size of the signature has to be reasonable, it must not alter the content of the image significantly. If you do not provide such a signature file, the competition organisers will apply an automated copyright notice for you, using your real name or nickname as supplied in registration.

8. The image submitted has to be at least 1280 pixels wide or 960 pixels high, and containing at least 1,228,800 pixels in total. You can use an arbitrary aspect ratio but should consider that the judging will be made on computer screens of no more than 1600x1200 pixel resolution. The image file itself may be no more than five (5) megabytes in size.

9. In addition, two detail views of disparate areas of the main image shall be submitted. This is to make sure that the modeling, texturing and level of detail are of acceptable quality, and particularly one suitable to print media such as magazine covers or posters if the image is re-rendered at an appropriate size. The detail views have to be at least 800 pixels wide and high, and the relative area covered may not be more than 1/25 of the total main image area. You are invited to chose the areas wisely, so that they participate in the global impression of superior quality given by your image, while being representative of its general level of detail. The pixel co-ordinates of the detail views within the main image will be required information on the submission form. You may see example of this in our sample submission area.

10. You must have the right to use and display all scene elements used in creating the image and the right to grant the competition organisers a license to display the submitted images in a website gallery or to place them on a CDROM or DVDROM as discussed below.

11. The organisers may, at their option, resize and/or recompress your image if need be. This includes but is not limited to making thumbnail or preview images of it.

12. Upon submission you will be required to agree to the following for the submission to be accepted:

    1. If something breaks and your submission drops into the bit-bucket or is otherwise damaged, you won't hold the organisers responsible for it happening.

    2. You and your entry comply with all rules and regulations of the contest.

    3. The organisers can display your images to the public in a competition gallery, provided you are given credit as the author.

    4. The organisers can put your image on a CDROM or DVDROM as a collection of digital art provided that they make it clear to anyone who buys the CD or DVD that the contained work is copyrighted by the authors of the image and can't be re-used without permission.

Additional requirements for the winning entries

These rules only apply for the winning entries but since any entrant could win everyone has to be ready to comply with these as well.

1. The winners of the competition are those who are elected to receive a prize by the judging panel after the end of the submission period. The decision of the judges is final.

2. All entrants awarded a prize must, prior to claiming their prize:

   1. Provide the full source code for their image for verification. The source will be handled confidentially and will be destroyed afterwards.

   2. Provide proof of their identity (which must match that in their registration).

   3. Submit a suitably sized version of their image to sponsor zazzle.com for display and sale, for a period of not less than 30 days, in the competition gallery that zazzle will establish. A royalty will be paid on sales made through zazzle.

   4. Agree to their image being used for marketing purposes by the competition and its sponsors for a period of two years, provided that the image is unaltered (other than applying your signature, resizing, recompressing it, or as otherwise agreed by you) and that credit is given.