Team 116 Animation Entry
 

:D Team 116 is proud to announce that their animation is complete and shipped. :D

After seven weeks (and God knows how many cans of Mountain Dew) our work has paid off. Animators Lev Popov, Steven Cohen, and Larrissa Deaton wish to thank all of the members of these forums for their support and help.

Instead of posting the animation and still frames all at once, we will be "releasing" a still frame each day for the next week. Next Thursday the final high quality animation will be posted on ImageStation .

Unfortunately in order to view pictures and videos on ImageStation, you must be a member. Membership is free. To sign up click here.

Once a member you can view our animation album at this site.

Head on over to our album right now! There are already two frames online!

Thanks all of you (especially Sunny who told us about ImageStation)!

- The Team 116 Animators

from what I see...you images are really photo-realistic. It looks really good and it seems like you did a great job.

As promised, another image had been uploaded to the ImageStation album. You can see it there, or just follow the direct links below (thanks to Sunny for the suggestion).

Today's screenshot: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...0.jpg.orig.jpg

Wednesday pictures:

Picture #1 http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...f.jpg.orig.jpg
Picture #2: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...6.jpg.orig.jpg

//edit: it seems that just clicking on the link doesnt work - try copying and pasting it into browser address line.

how did you guys get a such a good animation team this year,
i mean you guys put up a fantastic work, that might be a winner this year.
I really don't get it, cuz your last year's animation was just a piece of a
sh%t.

Dude Gun, that was the least cool thing I have ever heard anyone say. Team 116 is an awesome team and they deserve more respect than that.

Hey, i never said that team 116 isn't awesome, i am pretty sure that
it's a fantastic team, i was just really curious about the the whole thing
between animation from last year and this year. No mean to disrespectful,
just straight curiousity.

I know that you were giving them a compliment, next time just try not to tell them how bad thier previous years entries were compared to this year.

also, a % doesn't make you not cursing.

"No mean to disrespectful" ... calling their past work that isn't disrespectful? If I were to have worked as hard as 116 on something and had it called that, I think I would take offense.

It would have been better to say " The quality of your work has improved greatly." than to say " Your previous animation is crap." We understand the point you are making but you should be mindful to keep your critcism productive so they can focus on the criticism and not on the insult.

You might be surprised, but for 2 out of 3 people in our group this was a first year of robotics. When they came this fall, they knew next to nothing about 3d animation. I was the only person doing this for a second year, and last year, NO ONE from our group had ANY experience with 3d software. Considering how much we had to learn, i believe our last years animation was a success. We looked at mistakes we did last year, and tried to avoid them this time. There is no magic to making a good animation, it all comes from experience.

I take that as a compliment, even if it might not have come out the way you meant.

Well said, Lev! And we were all proud of the job you did last year! No, it wasn't as good as the animations from the winning teams, but the amount of effort you put into it alone made it a winner to us! And what you taught yourself is amazing!

Steve, Lev, Larissa, you are the tops!

MissInformation

<============>
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is why I wish FIRST would make a better showcase for ball of the animations not just the award winners. It takes alot of work to make these and just because they don't have the polish of the award winners doesn't mean they don't deserve to be seen at the Championship neither. I don't understand why FIRST doesn't make a multimedia area to show off the animations, Chairmans awards and the Websites so everybody can see the hard work these people did.
FIRST is always talking about it's not just about the robot but they are just about the only thing on display at the competitons.

Today's picture is now up!

The link is: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...9.jpg.orig.jpg

(Right click, copy shortcut, ctrl-v into address bar)

Thanks a lot.

-Steve

Great images!

Is that a 12 pass effect for motion blur? Did you use global illumination? Can't wait to see the whole animation.

-Brandon

Thanks for the comments
I'm sorry, but you kept me laughing for quite some time... If we did the 12-pass effect, we would be still rendering the first scene now... Thats just a "cheap" image motion blur effect (you can get it by changing settings in object properties). But you are right about global illumination - we rendered the scene with a lowered quality light-traced skylights. We were quite limited with the effects we could do, since we only had 2 machines to do the rendering... (originally we wanted global illumination, DOF, multi-pass motion blur... all the nice stuff... but we had only resources for illumination at the end.)

oh yeah,
i am the animation manager this year, and last year we had two
other seniors on the team. After the graduation i was the only one
who knew how to use the MAX. Cuz i had to make a team i recruited
7 ppl who didn't know anything too. I just told them to brainstorm for
the storyboard, but it didn't help much. I wanted to make use out of them
in next year's competition so i just told them to do the tutorials at home.
99% of this year's animation was all done by me.

Amazing! What realism you have in your animation!

How did your team make objects so realistic? Where there a lot of UVW mapping? Or was it purely just fiddling with the material editor?

For instance, did you map the hammer (with pictures from a real hammer) and then bump map it? And how did you do the textures on the red tool chest?

I have to say again, those screenshots are amazing! I can't wait to see your whole animation!

Most of the reason that it looks so realistic is that we made the textures ourselves from pictures we took with a high quality digital camera. In fact, a lot of the geometry that you see, like the tool chest, is really just a basic primative with a good texture mapped onto it.

Lev is the master at mapping, so I'll let him explain in more detail. But mainly, the secret to getting such realism is to map real life images onto things.

mmmm.... Mountain Moo.... i;d like to see those given away at competitions :)

Looks great! can't wait to see the whole thing. In one of the pictures i see boxes on their sides and on top of each other, and makes me assume movement of boxes. Did you guys use the synamics software (havok) or just hand do it? Or am i totally off and making a fool of my self :) When did you guys start working on this? And finally, what grades are you guys in?

Whoa, Thats alot of questions!
Yes, there was LOTS of UVW mapping, almost every object has a UVW modifier on it. Because of that, there wasnt much to do in material editor - most of the objects just have assigned diffuse and bump maps, and adjusted specular and glossiness values.
Steve explained it pretty well: for these two, we just took pictures of the real things in our shop, and then UVW-mapped it (with planar projection) on the simplified geometry. The toolchest is really just two chamfered boxes, with texture maps on each side. We wanted to have bump maps on the objects, but we had to leave them, because of artifacts created by Light Tracer+Bump Map combination.
We used reactor for one of the robot with boxes frames, but the pictures that are uploaded now just have hand animated objects. (We will upload the reactor-ed scene later)
We started on January 4th, right after Kickoff, although we had some storyboard brainstorming, and extensive facial modeling practice before that 10,11,12

Again, thanks for the comments!

The image for saturday has been uploaded!

Today we are posting a screen of a man we lovingly call "Dead Guy". No, he isn't really dead. We just call him that.

Our ImageStation album is here.

The actual image can be found here: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...7.jpg.orig.jpg

Thanks for your comments, questions, and support!

-Steve

__________________

Remember: Right click, copy shortut, CTRL-V to your address bar!

that is amazing...

I think that mountain moo is hilarious, you know what would be really funny? Print out that cover for that can on a label with your team number on the back, slap it on a can of the soda and hand it out as your little team thing at the regionals.

Yay for Mountain Moo!
 

None of us are actually sure what Mountain Moo is made of, but to me it seems to be one of three things: carbonated milk, carbonated cow hide, or carbonated beef.

I'd show you some of the original drafts of Dead Guy's head but Lev would probably kill me. It took weeks, but as you can see, it was worth it.

At the moment, the trend seems to be photoshopping Mountain Moo in convenient locations. Look for it in a FIRST photograph near you!

hmm..... interesting idea Katy.

The story behind Mountain Moo:

One of the parents kept a fully stocked icebox of soda near the door at every meeting. The sodas cost $.50 each (a steal! - sodas in the machine down the hall cost $.60). Every single meeting I would shell out between 3 and 5 dollars just for Mountain Dew (unless I had no money in which case I just asked people to help pay for my addiction). So when we decided that we needed more things to put on the table in the hammering scene, I suggested Mountain Dew.

Due to copyright reasons we couldn't do the Dew, so we did the Moo.

Also, I don't think that Mayberry's right. Something so good could not have such disgusting ingredients.

*laughs* our team lived off the stuff too, how else do you redo the box stacker at 2AM? We had a microwave there making Top Raman, Easy-Mac and Mountain Dew the entire robotics food pyramid. We called it practice for college.

Another image had been uploaded to our ImageStation album!

The direct link for the screenshot is: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...4.jpg.orig.jpg

Look at Steve's sig, if you have troubles viewing the picture.

My sig? I just have the link.

Oh right - I was supposed to put instructions in my sig...

Anyways I'll just give you my spiel:

Right click, copy shortcut, CTRL-V to your address bar, hit enter.

Hey Steve - no fair! You gave Mr. Dead Guy back his ear! And he was so much cooler when there was just a smooth slab on the side of his head!!! :D

And, personally, I always thought that Mountain Moo was made from the juices of the cow left over after they made those sumptuous Beef Sticks!

-dave

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Y = AX^2 + B... ehhh, whatever

Totally awesome renderings. Look like you've got a winner!!

In the image posted by Lev earlier today, I noticed the bump mapped image on the lower tool box has the "Kennedy" nameplate reversed.

Was that intentional or just overlooked?

Oops... You are the first person to point that out. :) Well, what we have here is the results of careless mapping, caused by rushing to meet the deadline (the toolchest was added at the last moment)... But, i guess its too late to change it now.

Another frame had been uploaded to our ImageStation album!
As it turned out, our scene is much less original than we thought it would be, during planning, but... its still there.

The direct link is: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...0.jpg.orig.jpg

<whisper> Lev.... I noticed that a while ago but didnt say anything. </whisper>

The Tuesday Screenshot is uploaded at the ImageStation album!

Direct link: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...6.jpg.orig.jpg

The final animation is going to be uploaded on Thursday.

The last screenshot had been uploaded.
You can view it at: http://www.imagestation.com/picture/...2.jpg.orig.jpg

The full animation will be posted tomorrow, in the Post a link to your animation here thread.

The animation has just been posted in our gallery. The link is:

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4290640581

Right click and choose 'save as'. Make sure to use windows media player. Real and ImageStation don't seem to get along.

-Steve

That looked pretty nice.
Just wondering how long did it take you to render that
(i noticed u used light-tracer and that took like 10 min a frame on my comp).

Thats roughly how long it took on Lev's computer. On mine it was between 3-7 minutes a frame. We'd just start rendering before we went to bed and it would be done by the time we came home from school the next day.

Looks good..
 

The pictures look really good, and I'm really looking forward to downloading it at school tomorrow. Hopefully, the TechnoKat animation "Break Left" will be uploaded to our website soon.

:)

Do you have a complete download in MOV or AVI? I tried to get it to work, but it isn't working.

the animation is encoded in divx 5.02 - you will need a divx codec to play it. (it can be downloaded from www.divx.com)