The 19th at the latest. And if we have no chioce it may have to be overnight but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

Ahh, sounds good. I'm thinking of asking our team to overnight it regardless, just so I can watch the confirmation that it gets there.


(btw koko ed, working during da school time too, eh? heh)

I don't go to school til the night time but I don't have a computer on the dock that could handle 3DS so I'm wandering in after class. 8 o' clock most likely.
We lost a whole scene last weekend (the stage scene that was posted in this thread ) and may have to remake it but our tech may have backed it up and we can recover it.
I hope. :(

Oh man, I feel for ya with the backups. I've already had 2-3 files go corrupt and on file "magically" balooned up to 176 megs....it was a very simple scene which consisted of no animation, juss modeling my robot. I knew something was wrong and being I didn't have time to figure it out, I jus went back and rebuilt that scene :-\ REMEBER KIDS! BACKUPS ARE YOUR FRIEND (...so are targas :D )

Thats the way max is a lot of the time. Any software that uses that much ram and such is bound to have problems. Its best to make as many duplicates as you can, maybe make one after you have the models, make one after you have materialed, and then make a duplicate for every animation sequence you do. Basically, lots of duplicates are necessary cuz the autobackup feature doesnt always work.

Also, for the guys with experience in other programs, does it seem that MAX is more unstable than the others on the market right now?

in response to the backups thing..it works and is neccesary. I just bought my computer and it is a dual processor (1.7 ghz) w/ 512 mb ddr ram. IT even has problems handling some scenes...I know it's not my computers fault...it's max's fault. To cover up for this I use an autoback function every 5 minutes and I allow a max of nine files to be autobacked...it works miracles...Also everything that everyone makes goes onto my computer jst as a last resort. In response to the overnighters, were planning on overnighting on friday, going to a team meetting saturday, working until 8-9 on saturday, going to bed, coming back on sunday around noon and working until it gets done on monday..

ahhhhh...animation competition..ya gotta love the feeling.

hopefully it ships on tuesday...(that would be throwing up a prayer). And then I'll take a long break. In response to specialagentjim...300 bucks? What company did you ship with..we did fedex and it cost 20 dollars..and we shipped on the last minute on saturday.

And your space scene is really sweet..Some people may have overlooked some small details. I like the motion blur of the stars in the background:) . I also like some of the lighting...but it seems as if the'pill' is a little bit to shiny...but I can't make that judgement because I don't kno here the sun is your scene..but you did a really good job...I am quite impressed.

I handle shipping through my dock all the time and the only companies that charge that kind of dough are either crooks or incompetent. That kind of money is charge for shipping large items (like the robot). Deal with major players like Fed Ex, UPS, Airborn Express or DHL. They have reputations to uphold and fear having angry customers telling other customers that they are a pack of vile theives.

Yeah, unfortunelty, we ran into major problems. We were three students working by ourselves, no mentors. We are a florida team, and had to get it to CA. Fedex and UPS wouldn't take it because it, apparently, either had to be cleared with FAA (Yeah..still trying to figure that one out...) or be shipped with an account that had logged a certain number of airborne hours prior to the sep. 11 stuff. Again, I have NO FREAGGIN CLUE why....but nonetheless, be prepared for anything.

Btw, thanks on space station! yeah..lighting is a bit off, i know. I wanted to spend about a week on lighting/rendering texturing, maybe even 2....Gee, where'd that time go. The scene was lit and materialed in about an hour. :-\ (really need that added as a smiley!).

Heh, and the stars was a cool little trick I just realized I could do sitting here. In order for raytracing to work right, I need a white backround. So, I rendered that camera twice, once with geometry and a white background. The second time was with no geomtry and a video post starfield. Used premiere, dropped the alpha out on the geometry render, and dropped the stars back behind. The blur was juss right because the same camera movement was used. :D

Any more feedback / suggestions I'm open to! Thanks again!

hope that a couple of you guys saw the stadium that we made (feedback?). If the plans for that work out like what we want...(which it looks like they will) look out!!!

Animation Teasers
 

This is a part of a scene of our animation...
*Imagine the White FIRST Logo spreading across the earth*

yeeha, number 100

Hey, check out my bins. I was just screwing around with the one on the left but the right one will probably be in our animation once I change the colors to be more accurate.



I might as well put the stadium up for those people who dont look in the gallery (I'm linking to the gallery not attaching these)

Nice

Sachiel7 and I wanted to compete in the AVA comp this year, but I don't think that will happen. I think we need to work on our skills over the summer so we won't have to learn-as-we-go next year. If we did do it this year, we would probably do all the 3d stuff in Anim8or.

GRT Animation Teaser
 

This is a frame from the GRT 2003 Animation...we're almost done except for the white splotches.

Re: GRT Animation Teaser
 

AIEEEEEEE!!!!



You might want to turn the intensity down. Just a little. Yeah. That would be good.

I thought of this idea for the teaser with the spreading logo. Allthough I cannot see how you did it..here's a thought. To make your 'spread" seem more realistic.. add a gradient map to the opacity slot. Adjust the levels of this gradient to get a "blur" on your edges that will make it see so much ore realistic...It will rocK!

Also a little note on our animation...our stadiu that we posted earlier/with playing field and people has a total polygon count of around 40,000,000:yikes: !!!! And to save some of you the mathimatical calculations...it takes about 30 minutes a frame:ahh: !! We are doing an alpha mask so we render the background and foreground seperately. But even that is still around 20 minutes a frame.:( SO just a little in for all of you...high polygon counts=end of good times!!

and yes I really do like using smilies:D