Gaah! Nothing for the animation people!
 

I am extremely frustrated with Autodesk and FIRST! They must understand that animation is a big part of many teams! Why doesnt winning a regional animation qualify for Nats? I mean, if someone wins the regional award but their team doesnt qualify for nats, then they wont even be around to see if they won or not or even to claim their award! Why wont First pay more attention to the animation people?

I agree that there should be some consideration here for the Championship Qualifying points.

The issue is that not all awards at the Regionals qualify. Like spirit and some of the other team voted awards. The way they set this up was to have the Students from the Animation teams vote for each other's animation. Since its not a "Judge-given Award" they probably figure their's not enough weight to the validity of the award. Personally I think if they want to show the importance of this aspect of technology, they need to give the some credit to the winners.

The big question is- Does the National Winner get points to count towards next year? (assuming they dont change the rules). If so then they may say that the regional awards simply narow down the field so that the national judges dont have to view 600 animations and only 60 or 80- however many 3x(all regionals) adds up to.

As far as not being at the championships- If they didnt institute this system and the animations only got awarded at the championships, you'd be on the sideline as well- and the two runner-ups that dont win the regionals would not get any points (if the winner did) yet they have an equal shot of winning the competition when the professional look at the animations.

Good luck this year and keep you chin up. I think the changes we are seeing this year are a direct link to the dialogue we had after last years championships. Hope you all look at this as progress (even with the earlier deadline) and we must continue to allow our voice to be heard. And maybe some day FIRST will think that Computers are part of TECHNOLOGY as well!

there's always hope for another team update that puts the winner (at least) in houston...but let's keep our fingers crossed. What I don't understand about the student judging is how it exactly works. Does only 1 team member get to view all the animations at the regional or only 1 tem member get to vote. And do we stop the...i'll vote for you if you vote for me thing.

just my thoughts

Re: Gaah! Nothing for the animation people!
 

I would be more happy if FIRST did a better job showcasing animation. They should have a multi-media tent to show off all the animation! Everybody worked hard on them and they all deserveed to be seen. Not just the fianlist.

has nayone noticed that this year especially. The animtion team is on a bigger crunch than engineering. We have 6 days after the robot is shipped to mail our animation in. Does FIRST not know about rendering?

Also how cmoe everysingle scholarship is given to studetns that enroll in the collge of engineering. Those of us following computer animation get...no scholarships.


but sometimes that jsut the way everyting happens

At best the animation competition is an afterthought.
I know the competiton is about the robot but FIRST is also more than just the robot and it's more than just engineers.
I wish they would give alot more credit to teachers, graphic designers and other professions that contribute to FIRST.
Right now all the animation is to FIRST is the illigitimate child of the chairman's award.

I dont know about an illigitamate child of the chairmans award. That would imply that at least in secrete there are good blood lines. (Since the Chaimans Award is a big thing) But we continue to see that there isn't much consideration in secrete either. The key here is that everone will be seen at the regionals and the qualified ones are seen at the Championships. The point of being at the championships still revolves around the fact that At best if you were to win points here- you would still need an additional 3-4 more to get your total of 5 Qualifiying points (As applies to all the other judged award winners). Form some teams the Animation could put them over the top. For others- it may still fall a little short. But if there are incentives for teams to win points through animation, maybe the team leaders will spend more time looking for mentors in this area.

I am a team mentor and work as an animator/Graphic Designer. I often solicit my clients and vendors for donations of time and money or services in this area. The problem is, most teams I hear from dont do this. If there was more incentive to win this award- ie extra qualifying points, then teams may pay more atterntion to the potential professional help in this area and will look for active participation of a mentor from the professional environment so they can produce better products.

One other issue- The entire idea of FIRST is for Students to see how professionals in the real world work. Yet here the rules say that you need to uses 3DS and other Autodesk Products. Frankly Autodesk isnt the only products I use in the professional environment and they arent the best either. I understand we want an even playing field- but they make it sound this year like we cant use any other products. I like to compostire animations in Aftereffects and Edit in AFX or Avid. I have worked in Lightwave for 8 years and can be a much better help to the team if I wasnt spending half the time trying to figure out their program (Which I do fine with- but takes lomger) Lightwave was a bigger player in the Video Production industry well before 3DS was. I also think its better rendering and lighting and more suitable for Engineering projects. If they want a Profesional environment why limit the tools- If they really want the best- FIRST should talk to ALIAS about MAYA which has come to a price point equal to Lightwave and 3DS.

Dont get me wrong- 3DS is a great program, but no one in my area uses it for Professional work- so getting professional help here is limited. FIRST doesn't limit the budget of teams that can afford to build two robots and alow their drivers to continue to practice after the main robot ships, why limit the budget or tools we use- Every program I mentioned is in the same budget anyway. And different style animations may look better in other programs.

KEEP THE TALK GOING, THEY'RE LISTENING

Actually I think we only have 3 days after the robot is shipped to turn in the animation. And in the rules it says that officially you can only install the program on 1 computer. So does that mean you can only install it once, or only use 1 officially licensec one and have the others in demo mode?

Thats what those 6 days are for. :p


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~
crunchcrunchcrunchcrunchcrunch

Yeah, except we had until March 14(?) last year. Cutting almost an entire month out of this is going to make things extremely interesting.

I offen have a few days or a week to do animations and if I have a month its considered a real luxary. Do get used to DEADLINES. Plan your work and make sure you do leave time to render.

In the past I would let the students try things on their own for the first month and see how far they could go before getting to heavy in the critiqueing. this year they will have less flexability and need to get the job done sooner- thats all. Less time to play more time to focus on the task at hand.

GOOD LUCK- You should find the deadline will not effect the overall quality of the animations!

6 days to render 10 seconds of high quality animation, model the final robot, and post-produce, and still get it in 6 days afterward?

me no think so

I dont know where everyone got the Idea there is only 6- Days past the robot delivery deadline. I thought the robot was due on the 18th- We are due the 21st which means for 99% of us its in the mail on the 20th. So where do you get 6 Days from anyway. I guess the thing to do is blame the Robot builders if they wait till the last minute to finish the designing. One of our resent graduates used to have the parts built in the computer before they finished building them on the robot. They usually prototyped most components first and then finalized the designs that work and fit the stategy we came up with. So be on your toes and be flexable with your 30 sec spot design and you'll be fine. Too much time lends itself to too much procrastination anyway. If I were doing our concept for a client, I could do it by myself in about a week. So 6-7 weeks for HS Students shouldnt be out of the question.

Once again- Good luck

i apologize for the 6 days thing. orginally I countd wrong and assumed that work on the robot is done on that saturday and not on the tuesday...but yes we are still in a crunch.

Personally, I think this would be a big help. A few years ago it was very difficult to find a college program that would teach computer animation. Everyone knows the movies like Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. but very few people in the world really understand how they are made. The information on the DVDs give some hint, but there's a lot more to it than that.

There are many well known college programs which are mainly in California, Canada or Florida. But the Art Institutes International have 3D Computer Animation programs in many cities. With so many potential students from the FIRST animation teams, one would think that they might be interested in offering scholarships to high school students for demonstrated animation potential.

Another thing I've noticed is that it's unclear why an animation entry exists for FIRST. Yes, anyone doing it knows it's technology related, but anyone doing it also knows there is a LOT of art involved to be any good at it and to create a winning entry.

Most students I've seen who join the animation team are much more interested in computers and technology than art. So is the mission of FIRST to reach out to artistic students and to encourage them to pursue an animation career? With the lack of scholarships in that area, I think the answer is no.