2020 CGarchitect 3D Awards - Commentary

Image Credit Pedro Fernandez / Arqui9 (2019 Non Commissioned Image Winner)

Congratulations to the 2020 Nominees!

The official nominees for the 2020 CGarchitect 3D Awards will be posted on Monday November 9. Congratulations to everyone this year and to everyone who participated. There was some phenomenal work submitted and the decision by this year's jury was difficult. Not only did they spend over 500 hours evaluating all of your submissions, the team painstakingly reviewed and in some cases re-scored submissions to ensure EVERY submission was treated equally and fairly based on the rules. The task of a 3D Awards juror is not an easy one. I would like to thank all of our juror this year for their hard work and dedication to our industry.

The winners will be announced live in an online awards ceremony on December 2 (details yet to be announced).

The Evolution of Rules

I wanted to make this post as there is undoubtedly going to be some questions about how and why some of these selections were made. I first want to provide a bit of history around the awards, their intent and how the process of evaluations work.

This year marks 17 years for our awards and each and every year since the launch, we have updated our rules to reflect the ever changing nature of the industry. Some rules were not as clear as they could have been, changes in the industry have sometimes necessitated rule updates, and sadly we have to occasionally close off loopholes that unscrupulous participants have tried to leverage to undermine the spirit of the awards. None of this however is unexpected and integrity of the awards has always remained intact.

Originality of Submissions

The goal of the CGarchitect 3D Awards has always been to put spotlight on the most talented artists and studios in our industry, but also to act as a platform to raise the bar for quality and creativity.

In fact, one of the criteria that every shortlisted submission is evaluated on is originality. This is one of the fundamental underpinnings of moving forward and demanding more of ourselves as artists and studios. It currently counts for up to 50% of the overall score in some categories. Our rules are clear about originality being a key criteria in our evaluations, so this should come as no surprise to anyone.

In recent years the predominance of renderings in the industry that are re-creations of existing photographs or other renderings has skyrocketed. This is both a byproduct of what schools in the industry are asking of their students, but stems also from many artist's desire to emulate other creative mediums and artworks to see if they can hone their technical skills. However, this is an evolution that has now tipped the scales and is one we all need to address in our field. This also now dips its toe into the waters of the Credit Revolution that many of you are familiar with.

If you are going to replicate or heavily borrow on the work of other creatives, that is certainly your prerogative in the confines of your studio and school, but no matter the outlet, if that work is published in the public sphere, you MUST credit the artist and image that you borrowed from. I would also suggest that you should be obtaining explicit permission from those same artists before your work is published. While some may view this as flattering, others will and can rightfully view this as an infringement of their work. Especially if it's being leveraged commercially or can in someway benefit the artist doing the copying.

Re-Scoring Submissions

This year we had submissions in a number of categories that fall into this area of copying or strong influence by another artist's work. We currently have no rules that prohibit this, as it simply was not an issue in the past we had to contend with. From that perspective, no one this year broke the rules. That said, in some cases the omission of information did create a problem. While we did not explicitly say you had to submit your sources of inspiration or relay if a submission was a copy, it is my feeling this should be self-evident. Especially in the context of a competition. However, the scoring of originality must be re-evaluated in these cases.

There are tens of thousands of new renderings created every year in our field and millions of photographs and artworks in the world. It is simply impossible, unless the submitting artist points out that the submission is a copy, for our jurors to know if what they are viewing is original. We discovered in the "Tentative Nominee" phase that the scores attributed to some submissions might not be correct. More specifically the originality score of the image. In the cases where there was dispute, all 16 of our judges re-scored the submission again to determine if the nomination should remain intact or not. To be clear here, we are not changing the rules after the fact, we are simply ensuring that EVERY submission is treated and scored equally. The integrity of the scores and the competition demand that.

As a result of these re-scores, some submissions were removed from nominee consideration whereas others were not. And this is undoubtedly going to be a source of frustration for some. The copies this year were exceptionally well done. There is a reason these images were selected. Although unbeknownst to the jurors at the time of their original selection that they were copies. The technical expertise and execution is superb, however from an originality point of view it's hard to score these very high as there really is nothing original to be scored. To reiterate, purely from the rules as presented, there is nothing that prohibited this type of submission, so the only fair way to handle this is to abide by the rules as outlined and ensure the scores are both fair and equal. The chips then fall into place based on that alone. The nominees are selected based on the scores and shortlisting of 16 judges and their scores.

Changes for the Future

As was mentioned at the very start of this post, we make changes every year to our rules and next year will be no exception. While the exact language has yet to be written, no category moving forward will permit the submission of work that replicates another artists work. There is nothing wrong with this as a technical learning technique and to better understand the creative decisions made by other inspiring artists. However, this type of work has no place in competitions and most certainly not in any commercial context that can benefit the artist. We enter a very slippery slope here as to where the line is drawn. Is 85% copy ok, is 50% copy ok? How much inspiration is ok before it becomes a problem? There will be a long discussion with educators and artists within the industry to determine how we handle this exactly. At a minimum credit should be provided where there is even the slightest chance it should be construed as borrowing from another's work, and an attempt at a full copy will be prohibited.

I'd also like to make a call to all educators that use replication projects as a teaching technique. Be sure you a very clear with your students that they should be seeking the permission of the original artist. If this original artist permits the copy, they should also be seeking very specific guidelines as to how it can be used. Can it be shown in public? Can it be shown in a portfolio? Can it be shown on a commercial website if they are a freelancer? What credit and language should be used to credit the original image? You should also explain both the legalities and moral obligations when going down this road of copying and ensuring the fullest of transparency when presenting the work.

Again, I want to congratulate everyone this year. Every one of our nominees did an outstanding job and their nominations are based the totality of our judges scores and the rules as published.

If you have comments feel free to post them below or contact me directly at jmottle@cgarchitect.com

Jeff Mottle
Founder
CGarchitect.com

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Timon Van Wynsberghe

almost 4 years

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Hi Jeff,

First of all, a big thank you for this statement. It shines a light on a worrying and ever-growing problem that is taking place in the industry. The age old question, inspiration VS copy. I think yourself, the judges and the team have all solved it wonderfully and taken the right decisions. I'm certain it mustn't have been easy and has required a lot of time and thought.

Artists that come up with original visuals and that push the boundaries of the industry take years, decades of hard work to be able to produce such pieces. Seeing their work being replicated, stolen and then rewarded for such behaviour was deeply concerning. Unfortunately, as you said it happens so often now that it has become almost impossible to distinguish today.

I believe getting inspired by an image and doing something similar is more than fine, as long as it's not blatant. But straight up "copies" or "3D recreations" of already existing works shouldn't have their place in competitions. I fully agree with your view on this, but also acknowledge that it can be a thin line.

I have witnessed this exact problem happening in many, many competitions these past couple years especially, not only in Archviz but also in other fields such as Concept art, web design, illustration, etc. However, I had never witnessed until now one of these competitions acknowledging the issue and taking the proper measures.

This shows to me how deeply passionate you and everyone involved here are and how serious the 3D architect awards are as a competition. You deeply care about the artists, about the industry, and about any inspiring upcoming visualiser, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

I am looking forward to discover this year's winners. Congratulations to all the nominees and thank you for inspiring us to push ourselves and to aim higher once more.

Jeff Mottle

almost 4 years

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Elena, a lot of comments here to reply. So I will address one by one.

>You have not contacted the people you are exposing through your website and this statement.

We contacted everyone involved where there was going to be an impacted as a nominee. As your submission was not impacted, you were not contacted.

> During the tentative nominees process the disqualification of people who break the rules was announced, but not a re-scoring. This confusion may lead to those people who do not take the time to read your post (which will be many), consider that the person that was a tentative nominee but is not a finalist has committed an illegality and therefore see their image discredited.

The concept of being a tentative nominees is as its name implies...tentative. That means it can be disqualified, re-scored, or manually reviewed by the judges. While I do not like having this process, sadly we have found it's the only way to ensure we receive the information from the industry about images and submissions that have either not met the rules or need to be further reviewed. Your submission provided zero information about the fact it was a direct copy of an existing photograph. As I mentioned in the article, this did not break the rules, but it should be self-evident that if you are going to enter a competition where originality is one of the key criteria, this fact should be made known to our judges.

> You don’t know if the participants you are accusing have contacted the authors or not, or where their inspiration comes from, since it is something that you do not require in the contest rules to register the candidatures.

You are correct. My comment was not specifically aimed at those who entered the competition, but the practice of copying work in general and best practices because this is an issue that goes well beyond our competition. We have an entire team that reviewed backgrounds of nominees in depth and their work and if the work they submitted was a copy of another's work. It's easy to find out. Again, it's not in the rules, but specifying the work being submitted is a copy should be self-evident.

>Scrupulous is a work carried out in a very thoroughness way, with care and effort, something that I believe is abundant in all the works presented, but not so much in your bases, which leave such important questions without mentioning or solving.

I am not sure I follow what you are saying here. Please detail how you feel the work of our judges and review team is somehow not fair.

> If this problem had not previously occurred, and as you say "In recent years the predominance of renderings in the industry that are re-creations of existing photographs or other renderings has skyrocketed.", it is probably because you didn’t found out, not because it didn’t happend, and that is a mistake of the organization of the contest, not a lack of scruples of the participants.

Try as we might, we sadly can not find everyone who tries to take advantage of the competition. I think over the last 19 years we have done a pretty good job though. And as I mentioned the rules evolve. What was ok one year is not in a subsequent year. It's easy to find fault when you don't have experience running competitions though.

>The seriousness of your contest is provided by its bases, where there is no mention of requalifications after the publication of the tentative nominees, changing them once published, causes them to lose credibility. Assuming your error and correcting it for subsequent years without damaging the image and work of anyone it’s your duty if you want the contest to be enriched.

As the name implies...tentative nominees, means tentative. We explain on the site that nominees can change on the nominees page. I beg to differ that we are losing credibility doing any of this. In fact, I think you will find most would feel the exact opposite.

ELENA BELTRÁN VILLAR

almost 4 years

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Hi Jeff, I applaud the end of your post where you talk about the need for clarity and accreditation of works in the industry, I totally agree with you, but I think there are some things left to mention:

- You have not contacted the people you are exposing through your website and this statement.

- During the tentative nominees process the disqualification of people who break the rules was announced, but not a re-scoring. This confusion may lead to those people who do not take the time to read your post (which will be many), consider that the person that was a tentative nominee but is not a finalist has committed an illegality and therefore see their image discredited.

- You don’t know if the participants you are accusing have contacted the authors or not, or where their inspiration comes from, since it is something that you do not require in the contest rules to register the candidatures.

- Scrupulous is a work carried out in a very thoroughness way, with care and effort, something that I believe is abundant in all the works presented, but not so much in your bases, which leave such important questions without mentioning or solving.

- If this problem had not previously occurred, and as you say "In recent years the predominance of renderings in the industry that are re-creations of existing photographs or other renderings has skyrocketed.", it is probably because you didn’t found out, not because it didn’t happend, and that is a mistake of the organization of the contest, not a lack of scruples of the participants.

The seriousness of your contest is provided by its bases, where there is no mention of requalifications after the publication of the tentative nominees, changing them once published, causes them to lose credibility. Assuming your error and correcting it for subsequent years without damaging the image and work of anyone it’s your duty if you want the contest to be enriched.