Friday, April 27, 2018

Space Engineers NVIDIA Ansel Contest

SUMMARY:
  • Starting today April 26, 2018 and ending on May 31, 2018
  • 5 categories:
    • Vanilla Epicness
    • 360 Degrees Vanilla Epicness
    • Modding Epicness
    • 360 Degrees Modding Epicness
    • Funky/Abstract/Pop Art
  • Win from a prize pool of 100 Engineer Skin Sets


Hello, Engineers!

Now that the release of our Major Overhaul of Visuals, Audio and Wheels has been in your hands for a while now, we’ve decided that it’s time again to kick off the next contest with the new visuals as the focus. As always, we’ve been following closely the incredible things players have been up to since this update released but now is your chance to show us what you can create by harnessing the power of NVIDIA Ansel technology! You can read more about the most recent major update on my previous blog post.


We are launching the NVIDIA Ansel Contest today with 5 different categories. We will be providing 100 in-game Engineer Skin Sets as prizes! On top of that, some screenshots may be added to the official loading screens or even printed on canvas and displayed in the KeenSWH offices!

Pressing ALT+F2 in-game will open up the NVIDIA Ansel screen which allows you to prepare your shot, edit the styling and choose the capture type. In offline singleplayer worlds this will also pause the game while the screen is open. Please note that you will need an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card to make use of this technology.

This contest will run until the end of May 2018. There will be five categories and each will have three winners. Entries must be uploaded to the recently launched Shot With GeForce website to be eligible.


Across all categories, we want you to capture the original visual styling and feeling of Space Engineers. Please see my blog post for more details and advice on how to achieve this original look that we are looking for. We have been working internally to get back to this visual style, both in-game and in marketing/public presentation.

General Info:

  • Each player can submit 1 entry per category
  • Deadline for submissions is May 31, 2018
  • Across all categories, we will be looking at the composition, colors, story and uniqueness of the shot.
  • Access NVIDIA Ansel in-game by pressing ALT+F2.
  • Screenshots must have a minimum resolution of 1080p but the higher the better! 4K and above would be great! Remember, you can take images up to 64K using NVIDIA Ansel!
  • Some winners may have their images added as official loading screen or printed onto canvas and used in the KeenSWH offices!
  • By entering the contest, you agree to follow all rules of the contest. If you don't submit according to the rules, you can be disqualified.
  • All entries of the contest become the property of Keen Software House. This means we have the right to use and modify your entries in our game, on social media, on our websites, etc.
  • We reserve the right to modify, cancel, or postpone the contest for any reason.

Prizes:

  • Winners of each category will get to choose complete skin sets of their choice.
    • 1st Place: 10 Skin Sets
    • 2nd Place: 6 Skin Sets
    • 3rd Place: 3 Skin Sets
    • 4th Place: 1 Skin Set

What to show?

Even though each category will have different requirements, there a certain aspects that we are looking for across all entries. These include physics, engineering, destruction, deformation, pistons, rotors etc. While an entry does not need to cover all of these aspects, it should have at least one of them being showcased by your design. Space Engineers has some of the most advanced game physics in the industry. You are able to create and engineer things not possible in any other game, and this is what we always like to see!


How to submit your screenshots:

  • Log in, and upload your image to the NVIDIA Shot With GeForce site: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/shot-with-geforce/ 
  • Once uploaded to the site above, send the link of your screenshot(s) to our email at press@keenswh.com with the subject line “NVIDIA Ansel Contest”.
  • Please also clearly state which category your submission belongs in and include a link to your Steam profile.
  • Deadline for submissions is May 31st, 2018

Evaluation
  • By myself and the Space Engineers team

The Categories:

Vanilla Epicness

This category is about creativity within the limits of the vanilla game. The only rule is to follow the guidelines of our art style guide. You could design a fleet, a planet base, or even just show some epic destruction. Blow our minds!


 360 Degrees Vanilla Epicness

The second category is identical to the first category with the exception being that the images must be taken in the 360 degrees capture type within NVIDIA Ansel. You have some extreme potential here when capturing a scene to really tell a story of what is happening in that world. The Shot With GeForce website has a built-in 360 degrees image viewer to see the format correctly. See some examples here.


Modding Epicness

In this category, you can access the full potential of the Steam Workshop and the thousands of mods that exist on the platform to use in your creations.


360 Degrees Modding Epicness

Just like the vanilla version of this category, you have huge potential to tell a story with this capture method. The difference of course with this category is that you can use as many mods as you like in your scenes! See some examples here.


Funky/Abstract/Pop Art

This final category is about coming up with something very artistic! You may choose to utilize features of NVIDIA Ansel like filters and AI style transfer to help you achieve this.

 
Space Engineers is still in development. Everything in the game is subject to change.

Thanks reading and we look forward to seeing what you come up with using this fantastic technology!

Marek Rosa
CEO, Founder Keen Software House
CEO, CTO, Founder GoodAI


For more news:

Space Engineers: www.SpaceEngineersGame.com
Medieval Engineers: www.MedievalEngineers.com
General AI Challenge: www.General-AI-Challenge.org
AI Roadmap Institute: www.RoadmapInstitute.org
GoodAI: www.GoodAI.com
Keen Software House: www.keenswh.com


Personal bio:

Marek Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an independent game development studio best known for their best-seller Space Engineers (2.5mil+ copies sold). Both companies are based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Marek has been interested in artificial intelligence since childhood. Marek started his career as a programmer but later transitioned to a leadership role. After the success of the Keen Software House titles, Marek was able to personally fund GoodAI, his new general AI research company building human-level artificial intelligence.

GoodAI started in January 2014 and has grown to an international team of 20 researchers.

At this time, Marek is developing both Space Engineers and Medieval Engineers as well as daily research and development on recursive self-improvement based general AI architecture.



25 comments:

  1. Can we submit videos that use ansel?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello, we are aiming for the screenshots in this contest. However, if you will send us an amazing video, we will check it for sure and we will post it on our social media.

      Delete
  2. Ansel is screenshot ONLY, you would use shadowplay for video (if nvidia) but the contest doesn't state "videos"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, that's bogus. That eliminates anyone on AMD or older nVidia cards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My card is a few years old and can use Ansel, if you're card is old enough it can't use it then that's not their problem.

      AMD aren't exactly providing anything to host the same sort of competition so blame them for that, not like winning a few skin sets is a worthwhile reward anyway.

      Delete
    2. i would be surprised if older nvidia cards ran the game in the first place.

      Delete
    3. You can play it on nvidias first DX11 Flagship card (GTX 480) though its not to amazing.

      Delete
    4. Hello Daniel,

      as we introduced the Ansel technology some time ago, we wanted to have this special system used for an incredible game screenshots. We fully understands that there are a lot of players who do not have nVidia cards, but we will have for sure other contests in the future for all our players. This contest is leveraging the Ansel technology and we'd like to show its great features within our game.

      Delete
  4. "Tasteful manipulation and enhancement of videos and screenshots through editing software like Premiere, Photoshop and gimp are allowed, as long as the source was in-game."

    I tried doing som background blur but I get an error when I upload to the Nvidia Ansel site stating "Only Ansel generated images are supported"...

    ReplyDelete
  5. well I cant upload my picture to the Nvidia website it just doesnt endless loading what do I do?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have the same issue, never finishes uploading :(

      Delete
  6. once you take the screen shots what folder do they go to on ur pc?

    ReplyDelete
  7. You know, these pics could be a lot more epic if there were NPC characters you could have on ships and stations. Friendly AI, Hostile AI, or just static with assigned poses....

    ReplyDelete
  8. Would be nice to disclose how much nVidia paid you to promote their stuff, including this contest.

    ReplyDelete
  9. It is not necessary. Solve problems with multiplayer, it is now unplayable.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Can I send more pictures than 1 for one category?

    ReplyDelete
  11. wait for modded eppicness does that include modded planets????

    ReplyDelete
  12. This contest is great and all, but were is the next actual update for the game. We haven't even seen a minor update in over a month.

    ReplyDelete
  13. that is terrible... Choosing shady NVIDIA as preferred company for optimizations (just read GPP story on[H]) ?! Better stay neutral...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is just one competition and is completely orthogonal to how we optimize the game.

      Moreover, if AMD has interest, we could do a competition with them as well.

      Delete
  14. Do we know when the winners will be announced for this competition?

    ReplyDelete
  15. ah when are the skin's going to be sent to the winner's of the contest ? i sent my skin request's in to a member of keen's staff ( Via Email ) and haven't received the skins as of yet. Steam name's ( GreekPsari )

    Could any one give me a idea when they will be sent out thanks.

    ReplyDelete