Realflowforum.com - an independent digital fluid simulation internet forum is proud to announce its 2008 contest:

"The Incredibly Useless Machine"

Build the most incredible machine you can, that performs an everyday mundane task using the tools provided within Realflow.

These machines are known as Rube Goldberg machines and are... "A celebration of the most mechanical, complex and absurd way of performing an everyday task. There's nothing quite like watching a cuckoo clock set off a bowling ball that rolls into a pie pan which lifts up some guy's pants before he gets arrested for exposure-again." (from Gizmodo). For more inspiration see rubegoldberg.com or Wikipedia.

All entrants get one free issue of 3DCreative donated by Zoo Publishing. To receive your copy send an email with the subject "3dCreative" and your forum user name. By doing so you agree Zoo Publishing to use your email for the purpose of giving you access to your copy of 3DCreative.

We thank Next Limit Technologies, Zoo publishing, RF magazine and Digital Tutors for kindly supporting our contest by sponsoring the above prizes.

Last but not least we thank our moderators Shaun Williams (shaun_michael), Thomas Schlick (tsn), Luke Olson (lukeiamyourfather), Christian Zuppinger (ChristianZ) and Michael Shea (Ls3D) for preparing this contest and additionally Luke for designing this site.

For questions please start a thread on the forum. For private questions send a private message to a moderator or send us an email.

Contest Rules

By opening a WIP (Work in progress) thread in the contest forum, the contest entrant(s) agree to abide by the following rules in their totality. Any entrant found to be in breach of one or more of these rules will be disqualified. From here on, www.realflowforum.com will be referred to as the forum, or forum. These rules are subject to change at any time if seen fit to do so by the owners and Administrators of the forum. Any and all changes to the rules after original publication will be published to the forum.

All day lengths within these rules are as defined by Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

1.

The contest starts on 1st November, 2008. The contest ends at midnight GMT, 15th December, 2008.

2.

No work should be included that has not been created by the entrant without proper credit being given. This includes pre-made models, textures, non 3D application-native shaders, Realflow scripts etc. Any entrants found to be including pre-made material, attempting to pass it off as their own work will be disqualified. All realflow simulations must be entirely made for this contest and not be simulations done prior to competition entry.

3.

All entrants must have been registered members of the forum on or before the 14th December 2008.

4.

Entrants must open a WIP thread in the appropriate section of the forum and regularly submit wireframe screengrabs and/or preview animations of their project as it progresses. Screengrabs and single image files can be placed in the contestant's WIP thread for this contest via the Image Upload facility within an individual post. Preview animations/WIP animations must be uploaded to a host outside the forum and linked to within the entrant's WIP contest thread.

5.

All entries must be submitted in full on, or before the closing date of the contest as published on the forum.

6.

All final entries must be rendered to Quicktime PAL 768x576 (square pixels) @ 25 frames per second also using appropriate and widely available compression codecs which should be noted when the entrant submits his/her final project to the judges.

7.

Entrants should upload their finished entry using the ftp address supplied the the contest organisers.

8.

All final rendered animations must be accompanied by ALL project files used to create the final rendered piece. This includes Realflow project folders that must have the following folders emptied before zipping the structure and submission:

Scripts - Any python scripts used in the RealFlow simulation of part or all of the entrant's finished entry must be included in a folder called Scripts which is to be contained within the folder structure of the Zipped media and project files.

9.

Members entering the contest agree that all media and project files submitted may be used by the forum, without reservation, for other forum members to download from the forum and use as training and educational material.

10.

Submitted projects found to be missing any files that prevent any other forum member from downloading and simulating the project for training and educational purposes will be disqualified from the judging process.

11.

The Administrators of the forum agree that all project media and project files submitted will not be distributed in any other way than that already mentioned within these rules without the entrant's permission.

12.

Entrants retain the right to distribute the media files and/or project files that make up their own final entry in any way they wish. They may not distribute other entrant's media files and/or project files without express permission from the originator of that contest entry.

13.

Voting will only be open to members of the forum who became registered members on or before 14th December 2008.

14.

Members who have become officially registered on the forum after 14th December 2008 may not vote in the contest.

15a.

A panel of Judges will announce the details of the winner on the forum. The Judges decisions are final and binding, and no discussion will be entered into.

15b.

Judging will take place in two stages after the deadline for the contest has passed:

Stage 1

All members eligible to vote (see rules 13 and 14) will be asked to submit one vote for their favourite entry.

Stage 2

The entries with the ten highest total of votes will then go to a panel of judges made up of the Administrators and Moderators of the forum.

16.

Entrants may still use the forum as a means to ask for assistance with their projects. All questions must be placed in the entrant's WIP thread in the Contest section of the forum. However, entrants are not permitted to use all or part of any simulation that may be offered as a result of a question on the forum.

17.

The forum is in no way affiliated to, or owned by (be it in part or in full) Next Limit Technologies. However, as a matter of course all Realflow simulations submitted for the purposes of this contest must have been carried out on a legitimate copy of Next Limit Technologies Realflow software as available from http://www.nextlimit.com. Any entrants found to have used anything other than a legitimately obtained demo version, magazine cover disk version, or a legitimately obtained fully licensed version of Realflow will be disqualified and their membership to the forum will be revoked. The disqualified former member of the forum will then be banned from rejoining the forum and any details of that former member held by the forum will be passed on to Next Limit Technologies.

The forum will take no responsibility for the use of illegally obtained software of any kind used within this contest but the forum does not condone nor promote in any way the use of illegally obtained software of any kind.

18.

The prizes will be awarded as follows and the decision on prize winners will be posted to the forum. The judges' decisions are final, binding and no discussion will be entered into.

All entrants get one free issue of 3DCreative or 2DArtist, donated by Zoo Publishing. We thank Next Limit Technologies, Zoo publishing and Digital Tutors for kindly supporting our contest by sponsoring the above prizes.