In February 2009 I announced I’d no longer be hosting the PhotoWorks Rendering Contest.  I received many e-mails and comments from people both thanking me for creating and hosting the contest as well as letting me know they were sad to see it end.  I even had a few of people inquire about continuing the PhotoWorks Rendering Contestat their own site.  I hadn’t though about someone else hosting the contest but I liked the idea.  After all, I had created the contest but it was really owned by the SolidWorks community.  Without all of you there would be no contest and the idea of handing it over to the community to do with what they wished appealed to me.  The great thing about the SolidWorks community,  it was ready and able to take up the challenge and continue the contest.

After returning from SolidWorks World one of the people asking about continuing the contest had gone through the work of building a website, filling it with content and registering a domain name.  This made me think  they were the “right” person to take over hosting the contest.  After talking with this person a bit more through e-mail it was clear they had no intention of commercializing the site.  This was important to me because  I believe the contest has lasted as long as it has because its based in fun and learning and not making money.  This person also had some good ideas about how to make the contest better and was very open to SolidWorks community feedback.

So, let me introduce you to the Chris Thorn.  Chris will take over hosting of the PhotoWorks Rendering Contest at his new website rendercontest.com.  While all of you have been busy creating an image for what was going to be the final PhotoWorks Rendering Contest, Chris was busy making the new site fully functional for the March (contest #37) contest.  Join me in not only thanking Chris but also supporting him in his new adventure.  I of course will still be an active member and my website will still continue to offer all the PhotoWorks information it always has as well as some new stuff I have plans for.  I’ll leave you with some words from Chis.

My name is Chris Thorn and I am a mechanical design engineer based in Coventry, UK. I have been a SolidWorks user since 2004 when I was introduced to SolidWorks at university, and I have been using SolidWorks in my job for the last four years. Although my job doesn’t require much use of PhotoWorks, I try to use it as often as I can!

The PhotoWorks Rendering Contest has been a great opportunity for people to improve their modelling and rendering skills whilst competing for prizes (and the glory of being crowned rendering champion!), and I hope the it may continue through this website. Unfortunately (for the foreseeable future, anyway) I do not have any prizes to send to the winner of the contest each month. Being just a ‘casual’ SolidWorks user, I am not affiliated with any SolidWorks User Groups at the moment and don’t have a ready supply of booty to ship out to the winners.

Ultimately, I have created this site to carry on the contest so that people can continue to learn about SolidWorks, PhotoWorks and now PhotoView 360. I intend to run the site as Rob has run his for the last three years. By that I mean there will be no advertising on the site, and the contest will be run in much the same manner: a model will be provided at the start of the month, the user will then have around 25 days to produce a rendered image of the model, then there will be a five-day voting period. The winning submission will then be displayed on the front page of the site for the whole of the next month, and full credit will be given to all contest submissions.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new website. Let me know if there are any features you’d like to see added tp the site, or if there’s anything you don’t like so much. I’m very open to suggestions on any aspect of the PhotoWorks Rendering Contest, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks Chris and good luck.