🎨 Iron Hideout Competition #9 | Theme: Wonderland - RESULTS | supported by hideoutshowcase.com 🎨

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First Officer's Log, supplement to Captain's Log, latest entry: The Captain has been rendered comatose like the previous crew during the latest outburst from the energy structures and flora. We have terminated our attempts to restart the generation core directly, rerouted the inputs to power storage arrays, and throttled the connections to hopefully avoid any further incapacitating bursts. This will also unfortunately extend our stay another week, increasing the likelihood we find out what is making the troubling sound from beyond the trees...



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The most farthest land. It is a primitive world surrounded by greenery. A space without malice. They say that deep in the dark forest there is a blue flower of purity.



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Completely isolated mapping observatory. Its existence has been confirmed at least 2000 years ago. The observer monitors the ground with technology from a defunct old civilization. He is immortal.



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Alice in wonderland inspired setting.



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THE ANCIENT ONE IS A TREE OLDER THAN TIME OR PERHAPS IT IS CREATION ITSELF.
BEWARE TRAVELERS WHO FIND THEMSELVES IN THE ANCIENT'S REALM .

If you find yourself in the Ancient's realm, lay down and slumber beneath its roots.
When you awaken you may see paths stand open that were closed before, where those deemed worthy may find strange puzzles with mystical rewards.

Eternal life, untold riches, mastery of space and time, unbound knowledge, everlasting bliss. Or perhaps nothing - or worst of all, swift and effective judgment.

Sometimes a portal will open before you to lead you back home or take you deeper into the Ancient's grove ...Or teleport you several paces off the path into nothingness of space as the Ancient quietly observes you frantically gasp for air.

Sometimes you will find yourself well rested back in your own bed not remembering a thing. Sometimes the roots will swallow you whole.



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Gorgeous scenery inspired by asia and a warm, cozy feel make this a most wondrouus place to be.



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For my last entry I went for a hideout that tries to capture the essence, the source, the heart, or however else you want to call it, of nature - in all of its wonder.



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It's got the magical feel of the night elven wilds. Plus, what's more wondrous than making memories with friends in MMO starting areas?



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The plummeting temperatures make this an ideal place for these mysterious creatures to lay their eggs. An alien wonderland if you'd like to say, either way better steer clear.



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Visit the spooky noises emitting and
glowing Oak Tree in the "Biergarten" or its mysterious sparkling brother in the cozy frontyard mapping area.
On top of this you can lay down next to good old haunting catarina if you dare to rent her room.
And if you are more down to earth, you will find a complete tavern and inn with everything you could desire. Wonderful ales and beer from all over the wraeclast, the famous vorici is chief of barbecue so all will get sliced well - and calling for einhar - he can serve you things, you dont want to see alive again. That will be a juicy one, Exile! Don´t say i did not warn you.



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A huge number of wonderful places are hidden from human eyes underground. And this is one of them - an underground lake. Sunlight, breaking through the cracks, illuminates the cave and the clear turquoise water underground. Importantly, there are remnants of ancient technologies, unknown magic that allows you to open portals to other worlds. And a beautiful tree, how could it be without it?

Welcome. This is the 9th of Iron Hideout Competition, a friendly event to race with other hideout makers or have some fun during the league. It's made by the community, for the community. No entry costs required, just good ole fashioned fun! Build a hideout based on a specified theme and enjoy some nice prizes!


This is totally unofficial and hosted by guggelhupf, PegasusRideR, Noooberino, Tallbird, Keldemahll, G4nzo and ZakkPerish. Original competition is created by Pixxelkick and is previously hosted by FallMakesHideouts, PegasusRideR, guggelhupf and Synopsis.

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Competition started in 17th June. Theme of this competition is Wonderland! Your hideout needs to look like a Wonderland. Wonderland would be a place where you are astonished and amazed by every corner. There need to be wow-factors, marvelous sights and just plain wonderfulness. A Wonderland can be in many forms and we’re accepting all of them! Also no percentage limit this time! There are 5 weeks to complete your hideouts, meaning submissions should be made until 22nd July. Then our jury team will do the voting, which will take one or two weeks. Shortly after voting ends, winners and runners-up will be announced here. After the announcement, prizes will be awarded and shipped, which you can see below.

Schedule:
► Competition starts: 17th June, 11:00pm GMT
► Submissions until: 25th July, 11:00pm GMT
► Voting start: 26th July
► Results announcement: 10th August or before

Past Competitions:
Iron Hideout Competition #1 (created by Pixxelkick)
Iron Hideout Competition #2 (hosted by FallMakesHideouts, guggelhupf, Synopsis)
Iron Hideout Competition #3 (hosted by FallMakesHideouts, guggelhupf)
Iron Hideout Competition #4 (hosted by FallMakesHideouts, guggelhupf)
Iron Hideout Competition #5 (hosted by PegasusRideR)
Iron Hideout Competition #6 (hosted by PegasusRideR and guggelhupf)
Iron Hideout Competition #7 (hosted by PegasusRideR and guggelhupf)
Iron Hideout Competition #8 (hosted by guggelhupf)


Why Iron Hideout?
Name and idea are by Pixxelkick. The inspiration for this event is the show Iron Chef. Like the show, entries must follow a specified theme.

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Weekly videos will be posted here as they're recorded. gugglehupf will be making these videos by recording hideout files one by one and combining them. This way all hideouts have the same understanding and quality. This also removes the need of submitters to make their own videos. Here are our weekly videos:

Iron Hideout Competition #9 | Week 1 Entries
Iron Hideout Competition #9 | Week 2-3 Entries
Iron Hideout Competition #9 | Week 4 Entries
Iron Hideout Competition #9 | Week 5 Entries

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Prizes For Winners:

1st Place:
► Path of Exile Atlas of Worlds Map(Only for Non-MTX Category): Picture 1, Picture 2
► Exalted Orb: Picture
► Your hideout will be pinned on the frontpage of Hideoutshowcase.com.
► A special role named "Iron Chef" will be given on Path of Exile Hideouts discord server by guggelhupf.

2nd Place:
► Exalted Orb: Picture

3rd Place:
► Chaos Orb: Picture

4th Place:
► Chaos Orb: Picture

Winners and Runners-up:
► A video showcasing winning and runner-up hideouts will be made by guggelhupf. Video will be also posted on r/pathofexile and r/PathOfExile_Hideouts Reddits.

Notes:
*Physical competition prizes are provided by the courtesy of Hideoutshowcase.com.
*Shipping prizes normally should take 1 month at most, there can be delay at times. Prizes will be sent with tracking and we will pay the shipping costs. Also, we will send prizes as gift in gift packaging with a note saying "Congratulations for getting 1st/2nd place in Iron Hideout Competition!" to avoid all taxes. Some countries will still ask for small fees, but these are very rare.


Prizes For Everyone:

► Brittleknee will do a showcase stream of all entries on Twitch. She will showcase and comment on every single entry! Stream date will be shared here when it's set. Here is the last competition's stream.

► guggelhupf will be doing weekly videos of all entries submitted each week. These videos will be posted on r/pathofexile and r/PathOfExile_Hideouts Reddits.

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■ No challenge-reward hideout bases, MTX hideout bases or MTX hideout decorations are allowed. Meaning hideout bases and decorations 100% should be obtainable in game without spending any currency in the MTX shop. Challenge trophies, old benches from before the master update, rhoa dinners or other exclusive non-MTX decorations cannot be used.
■ Your hideout must be your own work.
■ Hideouts that placed in Top 5 in GGG's Official Hideout competitions are not eligible. Also hideouts submitted to previous Iron Hideout competitions are not eligible as well. This means in this competition we're accepting hideouts made in the past too, you are also allowed to update them!
■ Your hideout must be safe to showcase(Nothing against Terms of Service of GGG).
■ Hideouts must fit theme of the competition. (details can be read up in the Competition section of this post)
■ Multiple submissions are welcome, limited to maximum 5 submissions per contestant.
■ We're using hideout files to record your submissions and at the moment there's a bug which makes not unlocked/unplaced masters spawn in random locations. Please unlock all masters and hide the ones you don't want to not-visible places like rocks, walls, etc. You can also make your hideout on standard where all masters will be unlocked. Sadly guggelhupf don't have time to confirm places of all masters in each hideout and if you don't unlock and hide the unwanted ones, they will most likely be at random unwanted locations in our videos.
■ Hideouts need to be uploaded to hideoutshowcase.com with the final hideout file of your work. Sharing is part of this competition. Also adding your Path of Exile forum nickname to Description part in Hideoutshowcase link is required.
■ Using post template below is required. All required is posting your hideout to hideoutshowcase.com and linking it here, putting an image on top is allowed and lastly answering questions in the template message below. As we will be doing competition videos, there is no need to share a video. But if you like you can make your own video and share.
■ Submissions breaking any of these rules will be disqualified.


Template message:

► Name of the hideout:
► Submitter name:
► How your hideout fits the theme?:
► Hideoutshowcase link:
► Video of the hideout(Optional, not required):
► Social media link(Optional)(One link to all your content):
► Do you want your entry to be shown on the showcase stream?: (Yes/No)

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Our juries will do the voting and decide on winners and runners-up. Our juries consist of talented and known hideout makers;

Noooberino (3rd of official hideout competition in 2019) | Hideouts Thread | HideoutShowcase.com
Tallbird (6th of official hideout competition in 2020-2021) | Hideouts Thread | HideoutShowcase.com
Keldemahll (4th of official hideout competition in 2020) | Hideouts Thread | HideoutShowcase.com
G4nzo (5th of official hideout competition in 2021, winner of Iron Hideout Competition #6 and #8) | HideoutShowcase.com
guggelhupf (5 hideouts in official hideout showcases) | Hideouts Thread | HideoutShowcase.com
ZakkPerish (10th of official hideout competition in 2020) | Hideouts Thread | HideoutShowcase.com

Each jury will vote for their top 10 hideouts. 1st will get 10 points and 10th will get 1 point in descending order. Then all juries' points will be summed up and winners and runners up will be decided. Voting will be blind voting meaning juries won't see each other's votes until voting ends. After voting ends, this post will change into an announcement post announcing the results and prizes will be awarded and shipped.

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► Path of Exile Hideouts (Discord Server) by guggelhupf

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► Zizaran | Twitch | Twitter

A) Conception or 'Where do I even start?'
The first thing I start with is choose a theme. In this Iron Hideout Competition the theme is Wonderland. My take on that is the obvious Alice in Wonderland but inspired by the video game 'Madness Returns'.
Next, I decide on the base hideout. It is important to have a vague idea on what you want to create, which scenes and how much space you'll need. What size do you want your hideout to be? Bigger is not always better as you will reach the object limit sooner if you want to decorate it all but too small might be not enough space to implement your ideas.
Some hideouts have special effects that may suit your theme like the sandstorm in Desert Hideout, snow in Alpine Hideout or rain in Unearthed Hideout. Perhaps you can make use of the hideout surroundings for your idea or you want to hide them and make it completely unrecognizable. Most hideouts have some kinde of unique topography like stairs, areas higher or lower, maybe even a water feature that you have to hide or can take advantage of in your hideout.

I wanted many different scenes which need a medium sized hideout, a scene with a Cheshire cat grin out of glowing objects in the dark which needs a very dark hideout.
At this point it was between divided or brutal hideout and the unique light effect of the divided hideout (changes lighting depending on the side you are on) was chaotic enough to fit the madness theme, so my choice was set.
After the hideout base I brainstorm some possible scenes, points of interest, landmarks - a collection of ideas that would be fitting my chosen theme. For this hideout I wanted scenes from: Cheshire cat grin, tea party, forest, queen of heart castle. With this in mind I roughly separated the hideout in four parts.
With that done, I have the theme, hideout base, scene ideas and a basic layout to start the building process. Sometimes I even do little drawing of the hideout layout but this time it was more organic and I changed it as I built. This lead to more areas being added like the caterpillar or the queen's garden that were not planned from the beginning.

I find that having this groundwork done with layout and scenes is very helpful to keep the hideout more cohesive and structured. Think about what you want to create, where, why and how before you do it.
I keep a text file with ideas and progress notes for all hideouts I create.

B) Lighting
Illumination is a very important tool and can make the difference between night and day, literally. As a beginner I hated using a dark hideout because you have to put light everywhere and you cannot see your creations but it can be a real boon to manipulate every shadow to your whim.
The rough basics on lights:
-Be aware of the light intensity: Oriath Lantern 5 and Iron Candelabra 2, for example, are very intense with a bright glare while Iron Lantern variations are medium and Iron Candelabra 7 or Innocence Candle Row are more soft with low intensiveness.
-Be aware of the light position: Oriath Lantern shines from up high, Iron Lantern from medium height while Azurite Chunk 12 is situated as low as can be. This can be very useful if you want to highlight objects from certain heights. Even the same light intensitiy shone from up above or down below will look vastly different.
-Be aware of the light color: Most objects shine in a pale yellow or fiery red but the Iron Lantern variations and Thaumaturgy Pillar offer a wide variety of colors. The color choice will influence the look! The same color can make your hideout more cohesive while a different one can put the focus on parts you want highlighted.
-Be aware not everything that glows is light! An even more advanced method is to use the darkness instead of the light. Work with glowing objects that do not emit light to contrast the darkness around them like Azurite Chunk, Sewer Moss or some variations of Ryslatha Tree and Arakaali Egg.

It is important to know your tools as an artisan so I suggest getting comfortable with every hideout object but to start you can use the object tag filter "Lights" to show most of the available lights to choose from. Experiment with them place them in darkness, move them back and forth and see what it does with highlight and shadows.


https://i.imgur.com/aFguHKl.png

https://i.imgur.com/Wu1mEC0.png
Here we have an example without lights and with lights added. The difference is obvious but just putting in lights is not enough you also have to be aware of where you place them and what color you use!
A really great technique I can highly recommend is placing lights inside or behind objects to highlight them.
I placed Iron Lantern with green lights behind the horns, left and right of the screen, to highlight the Toxic Pod, Grass Patch and Ryslatha Tree roots. The lights are hidden within the Kitava Horns, they give a nice background shine to the highlighted objects and with a green color compliment the verdant plants to make them look more lively.
I put a Innocence Candle Row inside the Vaal Block to give it a red glow that shines through the gaps, quite striking! Innocence Candle Row has a very low position which helps it being hidden where other options like Iron Lantern would peak out of the Vaal BLock. The color red was chosen to contrast the surrounding, to be colorfull, to create some mild entropy.
The caterpillar monster looks amazing and that is mostly thanks to the lighting. I made some worm creatures in the past but this time I wanted the caterpillar to have a segmented body. You can clearly see gaps between the Labyrinth Cog 6 parts. Now we use the method of placing light inside and behind objects.
By placing a light in the gaps but at the start of each it will shine on the front Labyrinth Cog 6 part of the next segment, highlighting it and incidentally the many legs. Iron Lantern 12 was chosen for the blue light as it was based on a blue caterpillar and another colorful light for the scene.



https://i.imgur.com/wXe74QF.png
The Cheshire Cat grin. This is possible because we make use of the darkness to hide things. You can see if we add a lantern light to the left side that I used Abyssal Whale Bones to shape the Azurite Chunk 10 into a cat like eye.
You can use the lack of lights to hide jagged edges or bad transitions, the opposite of highlighting them. TIP: Use a bright light somewhere near and it will darken the surrounding outside the light range even more!

If you have chosen a bright hideout base don't be discouraged. You can create artificial shadow with big objects like Fellshrine Ruins, Large Church Wall Arch or certain trees but be aware that the shadow will disappear if you are too far away from the object.

C) Object Stacking
Object Stacking is another great tool to really show your creativity. The hideout decorations available are limited but your ideas are not! By cleverly combining the available resources you can create something new and amazing. I like the comparison to LEGO.
One easy way to start your journey into the exciting world of object stacking is just placing the same decoration perfectly on itself but change the angle with 'R' for each one. TIP: Use the arrows to move the decoration and align it by perfectly overlapping the name in editor mode. For example with some Crypt Pillar 2 you can make a nice medieval tower like that.

Don't be afraid of mixing and matching decorations to see how they look. Try to think outside the box and use objects how they look not for their intended use. A Crypt Tomb 14? Could be used as the base of a Card. Torture Urn 4? I can use that as a tea cup!

It can be an arduous proccess, often moving parts back and forth, left and right until they have the desired shape or not. But once you have completed what you set out to build and it actually looks good? That feeling of accomplishment is incredible.


https://i.imgur.com/JQfwNza.png
Here we have the crazy tea party scene, the one I like the most. I'll explain some of the object stacking used in creating this scene.
Tea Kettle: Theurgic Precipitate Machine was used as belly, Tower Archway 1 for a handle and Kitava Horns 3 for the spout. Iron Candelabra 5 for shadow and light to hide the portruding horn from Kitava Horns 3 in the middle and focus the attention more on the side of the tea kettle.
Tea Cup: Here we have Torture Urn 4 placed in such a way to hide out bodybehind the urn. Rusty Disk 1 or Bathhouse Mosaic 1 for the plate. Laboratory ALembic is the bubbling black liquid inside the cup.
Cards: Crypt Tomb 12 or 14 but 2 stacked on each other with one angled 180° to have that iconic mirrored portrait look cards have. Luckily the upper side of the body has higher elevation and does not clip with the lower part. Volcanic Pebble 14 and 4,3,7 are used for the numbers and symbols.
Small Tea Cup: Rope Basket for the cup. The back of an Oil Lamp for the handle and to hide the rest of the Oil Lamp inside a Shore Rock 16.
Big Clock: Primeval Floor Mural 5 and Vaal Mechanism 1 for the background with Summoning Circle 3 for the hour and minute hands. As the summoning Circle 3 has four pointing arrows we try to hide two of them as they are not needed for the clock look.
Small CLock: Map device Parts 7 with Vaal Mechanism 4 for the background and Broken Ornate Fence 7 for the hour and minute hands.
March Hare Head: I started this with the iconic rabbit ears and used Kitava Horns 3 as they have the dark organic look, height and perfect position with an edge. Add in Rusty Crane 2 to make the ears more mechanical and hide some of the middle parts. Three Labyrinth Cogs 9 make up the base of the head. Cleverly stacked Karui Carving 4 just clip a tiny bit to make a tiny iris, giving off a disturbed crazy look. Labyrinth Cogs 8 for the nose and two Karui Carving 1 for the buck tooth. A Labyrinth Cogs 6 in the middle of the face to have more round lifelike features. Done. Not that many decorations used for a great look.

This is purely my own opinion and NOT representative of all judges.
The theme Wonderland can be broad and specific at the same time. It could be as generic as Alice in Wonderland, it could be a Winter Wonderland, it could have a dark twist to it, it could be a land of wonders.
A place were you are astonished and amazed by every corner. There should be multiple WOW-effects, marvelous sights and just wonderful.
Is it an alien planet full of unknown creatures and plants in rainbow colors or a magical unicorn forest or a hellish landscape with colossal structures reaching the sky.
I would consider a WONDERland anything that makes my jaw drop in wonder but to be considered a wonderLAND it must be more than one thing, a whole land full of wonders.

If anyone is curious, I will judge submissions on 3 aspects:
Skill (Is it pleasant to look at? No flickering or misalignments? How is the lighting?)
Creativity (Are there original object combinations? An interesting way to show your chosen theme?)
Theme (How well does your submission fit the theme of wonderland?)