how i did it....
 

Yeah it was a bit of a trick tryin to make this spreading effect work right.... i used Macromedia Flash 5 with a masked layer of the first symbol on the different countries.... then animated it spreading across the map...and exported the map as an .avi. Then i applied this map to a geosphere and added some effects and a cloud layer. And it worked AWESOME!!!:D I really like your opacity map idea but i would have to make a separate animated opacity map in flash again... and with deadline coming up i dont know if it will be feasable. Thanks David... and good luck with ur extremely large polygon count problem... yikes...

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5 days before ship.... ummm guys where are the controls gonna go....
who needs a robot when you have a cool animation instead....
I'm Serious about the controls thing too....
Team 537

Uhh..i dont mean to bring you down...but...this is an AUTODESK award for visualization...they kinda encourage the use of 3ds max...

Ummm yeah
 

Sorry... that i found a different way to accomplish my task... thats kinda what first is about... i found a way to make my ideas work through brainstorming ideas with my team... excuse me but max is not a standalone software package and some of these effects would be impossible without such things as adobe photoshop and other post production editing software... like premier or final cut pro (for you mac fans)... besides i have read threads in which teams are using completely different software packages like lightwave 3d or Maya... Autodesks asks you to put all the software titles you used to produce your animation... they do not restrict the software you use nor DQ you for using it.

Good luck to everyone with your animations!!!:D

Derek
Team 537
Animation Lackey

OOooooookkkkkaaaaaayyyyyyy. I'm not going to get into a flame war here, So i'm juss gonna drop it.


(Remember everybody! render to targas! heh)

sorry
 

sorry man just releasing some tension cuz its the last week and many many problems are occuring with our final renders... i.e. our machines are randomly overheating and shuting down in the middle of a render and corrupting files... I am extremely sorry ...didnt mean to start a fire ... just a little hot headed in the last coming days... please excuse my comments....
:(

I Cant wait to see other peoples work at regionals!! and Nats!!...

Derek
Team 537....

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ALL HAIL THE 486!!!

ummmm yeah...

Heh, don't worry about it, its cool, we're all getting this way. What's up with your machines? You might wanna juss open 'em up, take a look inside, see how dusty they are. If they're covered in dust, get some compressed air and spray out the fans. I've found thats the case with a lotta school machines. Lemme know, I'll see what I can do to help (Im an A+ certified hardware tech..::shrugs:: not that that means much, juss saying I can help troubleshoot if ya need it). And yeah, final week, I know..My team want's the animation done by monday. :ahh: .

Good luck everyone!

hey... (mixmasta321) instead of rendering to avis...render to TARGAS or tiffs. That way when they do crash you have a couple of frames finishe and then you can reboot and start where you left off...then stitch it together in premiere or something.

machines
 

Yeah our machines are about 3 years old but were purchased by our team... there isn't much dust... but on tuesday i got so pissed at one of our machines (nickname: Screamer... yeah it doesn't "scream" athalon xp 1600, 512mb ddr2100) it shut down right as we were about to save our scene and corrupted the max file we were working on, for some reason. Anyway... we all pretty much chucked the box to the floor, kicked it a couple of times and then took out most of the parts from the inside and then put them back... and voila! no problems since.... hmmmm nothing works quite as well as a little percussive maintenence...

and yeah David i dunno about the targa idea as of now... we've already made many high quality ... 1280 x 720 avi's that we're gonna put into final cut pro 3 and letterbox it up... and eventually output the animation at 640 x 480... YAY hi-quality letterboxed widescreen for the new age of TV's!!

Its kinda funny because our animation was supposed to be done rendering on thursday but we had to wait 28 hours to render 6 seconds.... ouch.... oh well the animation team is farther than the the actual rest of the robotics team... our robot isnt even moving yet...I am scared because the robot build and test is soooo far behind.... the robot only moves on our computer screen....

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3 days before ship.... ummm guys where are the controls gonna go....
who needs a robot when you have a cool animation instead....
I'm Serious about the controls thing too....
Team 537

We gotta find a render farm somwehre that will give us some free credits on teh render farm to use (ya know..put us at a lower priority than the ppl paying, but have us run whenever tehy can have us running..)

Team 68's Teaser
 

Here's a little sneak peek of what we got here in Michigan. Good Luck to all.

Ya we've been working long and hard on that aniamtion. Just wait til its done and all of you see it. I promise that this will be Truck Towns best animation ever. Good Luck to everyone else.

Nicely modeled truck!!

real quick suggestion...

i can't tell if your scene has shadows..but if it does...make them more obvious it will really help make your animation much better.

our terrain is i think 32k polys, and then the trees are another 8k each... We need to use a few optimizes... W/ advanced lighting, we get a frame every 1/0 seconds. But oh well, it looks kinda groovy, and that is all i ask for. BTW -- our nut mage kicks $@#$@#$@#, and our swarms are groovilicious.

Since when did these forums censor themselves?

Here is the start of our character ... let us know what you think