A joke they called Regional Animation Competitions
 

I feel that I have to share this. I’m not sure how many teams here were at Richmond regional, but for those of you who hadn’t been there – here is how it went.

Our animation group arrives on Friday, full of hopes, and receives a voting ballot for the animation judging. Soon enough we are able to find the spot where animations are played, and guess what? It is located in the pits area, the noise level is above anything that the small TV placed there can produce, and the best part of all – you HAVE TO WEAR goggles in there! The feeling was that they were just hiding away the whole animation competition.

But that was only the beginning. We look through the loop of animations played and see that our animation is COMPLETELY screwed up by grainy artifacts, flashing white screens and color shifts. The whole thing is painful to watch. It is 8:30, and we start running around the competition area trying to find someone to talk to. Turns out – there is no one there right now who knows about animation at all, “but if you wait till 10:00 someone will show up”. We nervously wait till 10:00… nobody there… 10:15… still nobody… 10:25… finally, a lady comes saying that she is going to run the judging, but she is not actually an Autodesk representative, - just a volunteer helping out (the real representative had said that he couldn’t come so they quickly needed to find someone else).

We explain our situation, and ask if we could show our REAL animation on a laptop (luckily I’ve brought a CD with our animations on it). She agrees, and we spend another 30 minutes running around to find a laptop that could play our animation. (640x480 high quality mpeg is not something our control group’s laptop could run). Finally we are set, and there are some team judges starting to come to the table.

Judging. No one knows when the real judging began. Nor even the fact that there was animation judging was ever announced. There were a TV and a laptop sitting through 10:40 to 2:30 and teams just randomly came and judged. The TV was so small, that only one team could judge at a time, with a small line waiting for their turn. And yes, we had to sit by the laptop, embarrassingly explain to the teams that we are not crazy, and we did not originally have the seizure-inducing flashes on our animation, and would they please watch our animation on the laptop, and not on the TV? Most did… I know of at least 2 that didn’t…

Now for the scoring itself. Each team was given a ballot with team numbers, and rubrics listed for each: “Content”, “Creativity”, “Technical Execution”. So you had to fill out the numerical scores for each animation, say “30/40” content, “23/40” creativity, “15/20” execution. There are so many wrongs with this system, that I’ll need a list to mention them.

- Can someone think of a more subjective scoring system than this? I can’t. Every single team had different ideas of what the rubrics really were, and what appropriate scoring ranges would be.
- The final score for each team were AVERAGED – you don’t want your team to lose? Just give low scores to your competition!
- There are 25 animations – judging all of them takes 40+ minutes. Your scoring “scale” will inevitably shift during the process, which means that first 5 teams played are judged on a scale completely different than the last 5.
- Again, looking through all animations takes at least half hour. With the pressure from the teams waiting in line, it is next to impossible to spend appropriate time for judging each animation. Many teams just rushed through the scoring, not really thinking about the points.
- With all of the numerical scores that should have been added, averaged, etc. I can bet there were calculating mistakes during the scoring, they probably didn’t make much difference in the end, but the fact of their presence is still pretty sad.

The system was horrible without doubts. Implementation was even worse. Soon enough we found that there were teams whose animation was on the tape, but whose numbers were not on scoring sheets. There were opposites – they were on scoring sheets, but animation was missing on the tape. There were even worse cases, when the animation was on the tape, but title screen was cut off, making it impossible to identify and score it. Most of the teams who got screwed up like this were not even scored, automatically loosing. And some of them were pretty good too.

Continuing ranting about the tape. Artifacts – ours was not the only one covered with flashes, but by far the most artifacted on the tape. There were others with minor flashing (which nevertheless killed any possible good impression from viewing the uncorrupted parts) and graining. The best artifact I’ve seen – the “Low Battery” message that got recorded over team 21’s animation (actually I’m not sure about this one – if it was original part of animation, I take this back, but it really didn’t look like it should have been there. We’ll need someone from team 21 to clarify that) But that’s not all – the order in which animations were recorded was pretty “interesting” too. I haven’t noticed any discernable logic behind it – it was random at best. And there were duplicates on the tape! Some of the animations were recorded twice per loop! Why? Only Autodesk knows…

The last thing – could someone please, please explain me why did Autodesk divide the whole thing in conferences?? All of the conference animations get judged at regional, but only the teams who actually submitted to this regional can win! What do they do with the scores for the rest of the teams? Throw them out? Or what?

Finally, the award ceremony. For the first time we actually hear something said out loudly about the animation award. We nervously wait, still with some hopes of winning – we know that at least 2 out of about 6 teams that judged had seen the wrong animation, but we still have hopes. No luck on this one, winner being team 343.We know, that now its too late to argue about anything, but we still want to see if we are one of the two runner-ups that get to go to national championship for the animations. According to the rules: “The scores will be available immediately after the award ceremony”. Yeah, right – only there wasn’t anyone there who knew anything about the scores, and the most we heard is that Autodesk still haven’t decided if they want to release them right now.

When we arrived to competitions on Friday we had really high hopes for winning. And if there were no artifacts (which were definitely Autodesk’s fault – we have submitted our entry in Intel Indeo which fits perfectly under the rules, and we tested it for compatibility on numerous machines with different operating systems), it would have probably been so. And many of the teams that had actually seen the uncorrupted version had agreed with that. Our visual quality was nullified by Autodesk’s incompetence in transferring the video to VHS, and our sound track was thrown away by the noises in the pit area. Even if we had some chance with presenting our real animation on laptop – that was destroyed too, by the utter disorganization of the whole animation competition and the judging in particular.

But its not just about the scoring or judging. What I find the most sad is the whole attitude FIRST has toward the animation award. They didn’t bother to take time and write rules that make sense, find a decent place for judging, inform the public of even the presence of such award, - they didn’t even bother to look at the tape they prepared for the judging! I’m sure that if ANY official had seen it, it would not make its way to the regional.

In case any of the FIRST officials are reading this – here is a list of my suggestions for regional animation awards:

- The animations should not be played on a small TV in the farthest corner of the pits. Teams worked hard on their entries and it would be fair to recognize their effort – set up an LCD projector so that everyone can see it!
- The judging should take place in a separate, quiet, room, where the animations should be played off an LCD projector from a computer – not a VHS tape – this will remove 9/10 of the visual problems.
- The time of the judging should be announced so that everyone can hear it! Why do volunteers need to run through the pits asking if their team representatives had already judged?
- I know it is late to change the scoring system, but still few things can be made to make it at least somewhat more objective. Before judging, teams should re-read the rules, to see what rubrics are composed of. Also, more specific guidelines should be given for the points system – for example: 20/40 – average, 30/40 – very good, 35/40 – exceptional and so on.
- The scores should be posted somewhere immediately after the awards ceremony. And not only posted, but announced where they are.

Now that we are screwed, I don’t know where our entry will end up. Anyways, I wish luck to all of the teams on the upcoming regionals, and that FIRST would do something so that our story will not repeat.

I was wicked annoyed with the animation competition at NH Regional. It was no better than richmond, judging in the noisy pits. And during the awards cermony they didn't even show the winning animation. I also was under the impression that they would announce 3 winners from the division, and they only announced 1, and it was from a team not even there. The least they could do was show the winning animation.

Rebecca
Animation on 166

I was also at VCU, but I did not enter the animation there... still I'm agreeing with the above post. The conditions were horrible... I don't think there was any sound, and if there was, it was inaudible over the announcers and music. Animation was barely even spoken about at all during the actual competition either... hopefully FIRST will strive to correct this mistake. Animation is getting bigger, and FIRST is recognizing that, but what they did at VCU is totally unacceptable. The least that could have been done was to set aside a small room where 10-20 people could have been in a classroom setting to watch the animations. Hopefully the Arizona regional's will be better than this.

I suspect that FIRST will take into account the opinions of team animators like the ones posted here nad will make marked improvements to the process.

I just found it unbearable.
 

For every minute I spent enjoying the actual competition at VCU, there were at least ten minutes Lev, Steve and I were scrambling around the floor in absolute panic. The other guys maintained a relatively calm outward appearance, but I could tell they were all as nerve-racked and angry as I was. Lev did an amazing job understating the nightmare that competition was.

On a side note..
the 'Low-battery' in Combbat's (21) animation WAS intentional. Their animation was of someone holding a video camera, taping a marionet puppet show with only 30 seconds of battery time left. The low battery flash came on and they cut.

I take my words about it back then... I just didn't understand it when i saw it. With so many screw-ups on the tape it looked like the most probable thing. (Very realistic "Low Battery" effect, by the way ;))

Sadness
 

Ahh, the horror stories continue. I know for a fact that our team did not even bother to submit an animation entry for this year, due to the frustration with last years complete lack of attention to the award. I worked on the Chairman's award last year, and i helped with the audio mastering for our animation, which did not even get heard in the pitiful exhibition environment. If anyone from FIRST reads this i hope that they take heed, teams work very hard on this animation, only to be repeatedly disappointed with its lack of recognition. If you are going to continue to hold this as an award category, please give it the respect it deserves; otherwise other teams will become as disenchanted as we have.

I told him it was intentional. Though there was no way to hear that there were 30 seconds left. It was a tad bit too loud in the pit.

I wasn't at a regional this weekend, but I do have some input.

Our team was one of the teams lucky enough to have a place to go watch the regionals via NASA sat video feed. Back at motorola, we used it to watch the whole competition. I was really kinda upset that during the awards ceremony, which was all I was able to watch about animations, they only announced ONE winner. They didnt announce the runner-ups AND they didnt show the winning animation. Team 1038 at the cleveland regional obviously did a good enough job to win and should be recognized by having their animation shown to the audience and to all of us joining in around the country. I STILL have no idea what team 1038's animation looks like!

Why does it seem animaiton is ALWAYs an after thought with FIRST? If they dont recognize it as something worthy of this whole competition, then they shouldn't continue to announce it and have teams of students working feverously to get it done. I mean, com'n! The rules this year made little sense and were very misleading and I still have NO IDEA what the prizes this year are! Last year, a laptop was given out along with copies of 3ds. Somehow...with the lack of a commitment to a prize...(taking a stab in the dark here mind you) I'm guessing the winner will get a pat on the back and be sent back the bleechers. Somehow, I think my efforts will be more so focused to the robot next year...(however, I'll be here helping out everybody who needs 3ds help juss as I did this year, because thats the true "grasiously professional" thing to do..unlike the way animation appears to be running this year.)

All I, as well as the other teams here ask, is that a little more "Grasious Professionalism" be applied to the animation comeptition.


And Lev, I feel sooo bad for you man, you all had a technically excellent animation, I still have yet to see many of the others, as Ive been here in Florida still. I won't have a chance to view the animation judging system until UCF (19-22) and Chicago (27-29) but you can bet I'll post here when that time comes.

Good luck to all the animators out there! Try not to give up hope though...If we band togther and keep at it, something will have to change eventually.

Thanks to the animation teams
 

Hey all animation people out there, I just wanted to say thank you for putting so much effort towards the outstanding final products as they really compliment the robot competition itself. It was most enjoyable to watch the animations in the theater at the VCU team party (although I agree it was difficult to watch them at the regional itself), and, hehe, great job to the team that showed the robot flying off the ramp to the moon - love the flapping wings! I also wanted to express my sympathy for you all having to deal with cruddy conditions and appologize for my team invading the autodesk space at the VCU regional if that contributed to the problem. A special commendation to Lev, Steve, and Larissa, the core animation team for 116. We're all proud of what you turned out and were betting the most on winning Visualization out of all the things we went for this year! I, too, hope FIRST will take these comments into consideration for next year. For the past three seasons I've wondered why they don't show the winning submissions for this and chairman's award at the regionals, but this year's situation kinda tops all that.

I, too, was confused by that until I saw it again at the Team Party. Why? I couldn't hear the sound at the regional. It seems to me that they could have shown them up where all the exhibits were. That way teams wouldn't get in the way physically and it's a lot less noisy.

Hmmmm. I understand completely. I had trouble watching them at Cleveland and I had problems with who won. The animation was supposed to be about what FIRST meant to us. Everyone there that I saw did nothing dealing with that and just made fancy animation. It was cool and well done but it didn't follow the guidelines to begin with and it rind of annoyed me. They give you a topic to animate about people....can we stick with it please??????

personally I'm shocked...plain shocked. Now my team dosen't go to a regional until the last two (midwest and west michigan) but from listening to the crap that went on already...something has to change. Most of us didn't spend week sitting in front of a computer in a dark room at 3 in the moring to have our animation judging in a PIT! Sooooo...Here's what we can try to do. I think that if the teams take it upon themselves to make this a better competition...it will. We're emailing autodesk right now and offering our help at the West Michigan regional...I know that there are plenty of rooms there. Our team might be able to bring a projector or something. But I think it's safe to say....first+animation=joke. Anyone that wants to help just reply here.

Also what were the awards?

While it is very easy to beat on FIRST for their indifference to the animation competition (and I'm one of it's biggest critics) it must be said that this is a step in the right direction. Now we have to encourage FIRST to take more steps to make it better.
If you look at the early FIRST competitions it is light years from what it is now. There is no reason why the animation cannot become that as well but it is up to us to keep the pressure on FIRST to make the improvements so they don't just think they've dine enough and the animation competition is OK the way it is now. Keep voicing your opinions and also give suggestions on how to improve the competition so FIRST can see that it is a possibility.
We devserve this, because we work just as hard as any of the kids and engineers who work on the robot.

The Cleveland regional was not much different from Lev's story above. We had to request that the small TV be moved twice because it was so loud in the pits. They finally hooked up an external speaker and that helped out a lot; although most of the judging was finished by this time. No announcement was ever made about judging. Some of the animations had credits and copyrighted music. The award ceremony didn't even show the winning animation nor did they announce the 2 runner ups. The scores were never posted. Not a soul in the place new exactly what was going on with the animation or the website awards. I think FIRST should take the suggestions of the prior post into consideration.

Secondhand Rose...
 

The conditions for viewing the animations at the Granite State Regional competition were certainly less than optimal. It is truly unfortunate that the hard work done by all the participating teams submissions was not enjoyed by many more than just the judging contingent.

The students on animation teams work as hard on their contribution as do the mechanical/electrical/controls people do, and therefore should be accorded the same considerations for their efforts.

I would sincerely hope that future competitions take the animation submissions more seriously and afford them with a venue more suited to viewing, judging and general appreciation than has been shown in the past.

Please, FIRST and Autodesk officials, take note of these concerns and work at rectifying them for the future.

I agree that the regional competitions were a mess. But here's one thing we should consider -- and feel free to shoot me if I'm just projecting my own team's problems on everyone else, but I get the feeling it's endemic --:

FIRST is about inspiring students to become engineers. Companies want employees, Dean wants clean water to become universally available, and NASA wants a budget.

It's a leap of logic to instead inspire students to make animations which in turn inspire other students to become engineers. The general reaction to animations is that it's awesome eye-candy -- pretty, but pointless. Partly it's the thirty-second time limit. Partly it's the overally quality of the animations.

Too many animations are just people fooling around with 3DS Max; watch at the regionals, or watch some of previous years' examples. Once you get past the Cybersonics and Metal Jackets, there's a lot of frass in there, the kind that makes a poorly-made robot look sleek. I'm not saying that the teams with those animations are bad; they (we) probably just didn't have enough support.

How many animation teams consist of primarily just one person? Too many.

Inspiring engineering wins awards like Chairman's and so on, but inspiring animators doesn't. Or at least, nobody's tried it. If we put the kind of effort into recruiting new members -- quality members, the honest types willing to spend time and effort towards making an awesome animation -- maybe FIRST will start to notice us.

But maybe it's impossible to do that with a 30 second time limit and a theme like "What does FIRST mean to you?"
I dunno.

I just finished the Sacramento regional, and have to say that it was on par with what you are saying. At first I thought that the TV sitting in the pit area was due to the fact that Sacramento was a rookie regional. However, to continue the tale of woe, autodesk Forgot, FORGOT! I tell you to put our animation on the tape.:ahh: When I talked to the autodesk representative their response was roughly along ithe lines of "Oops." I was very upset. Although our team had very little chance of winning (as I had never used the software before, and spent five weeks learning how), I was really upset by all of my work being wasted. Moreover, what is with teams not in the regional being able to win???:confused: Our regionals competition was won by Gunn robotics (team 192), who had a truely remarkable movie, by the way, but they didn't come to our regional. At this point i am seriously considering whether or not to enter a movie next year. At least I can hope that the Silicon Valley regional will be better.

The Buckeye Regional was also very unorganized and unprofessional. I have no idea how well our team did, nor do I have any idea how conferences work (why were we judging animations for teams that didn't attend our regional? What would happen if they won? If the top three teams from each regionals goes onto nationals, how does that work? Does that mean somebody can go to nationals a few times because each team is judged at several regional competition?). Nobody at the competition had any clue about anything related to animation or website for that matter (and not to knock 1038's website, but isn't it odd that Chief didn't win it?). Our animation relied heavily on our sound and music (which we recorded ourselves; many teams took copyrighted music), yet it was being shown in the loud pit area on a small tv. I highly doubt that ballots were screened so that people did not vote for themselves.

I lead a team of very dedicated and motivated high schoolers to make a great, high quality animation that we were very proud of. After spending so much time on it, it sure doesn't seem fair that there was absolutely no thought put into the organization of this animation competition. I'm very disappointed in FIRST and I was hoping that not all of the regionals would be thrown like this. I'm sorry that your scenario was just as bad if not worse than mine. FIRST needs to start to understand just how much time and effort is spent on some of these animations.

-Adam Smith
Westside Boiler Invasion, Team 461 Information Technologies Coordinator

I believe ChiefDelphi was ineligible because their site is basically vBulletin, a software package. I'm not positive though, just heard it somewhere. I was actually in shock when it was announced that we had won, I was one of the students that was working on the website and we weren't even planning on submitting it. We didn't put in as much effort as we'd have liked to and didn't feel it was up to standards with other great websites in the FIRST community. I heard during the competition that one team had voted for us, I figured they were the only team to actually vote or something. I was very surprised that we won, I don't think we really deserved it.

chiefdelphi.com was not entered into the website competition. I've posted it a few times ... somewhere.

This is my third year involved with the competition. I teach 3DS Max for a local college.

Each year I complain about the utter indifference FIRST and most particularly Autodesk displays toward the animation portion of the contest. We are truly the "ugly red-headed step-children" of the competition.

A recent post here stated that while the conditions are not as good as they should be, they are light years from where they used to be. I beg to differ, seems to me they've nose dived since I started.

This year FIRST/Autodesk posted at best misleading, at worst completely wrong, suggestion on how to test your animation. I immediately emailed Autodesk and begged them to please contact Discreet.

Over the years I have attempted to contact Autodesk about 4 or 5 times about misleading directions, compressions, and other general goofs. Never before have I received a reply. This year I didn't hear from Autodesk, I received a call from Discreet.

I wont tell you here who I spoke to and the general tone of the conversation, but I will tell you one of the things Discreet and I discussed was compression. I've long held that almost any kind of compression (particularly Cinepak) will look like dog poop on any size screen, particularly on a 40ft screen like the one at Nationals.

Lev posted here that there was a lot of pixelization as well as flashes in the animations. My first inclination was, "Well, there's Cinepak for ya'" but then it dawned on me that Lev watched it on VHS.

In order to insure proper display of your animation on a normal TV screen, you should render to fields. TV video is "interlaced" fields (half a frame) or layers. If you do not render to fields, occasionally you get flickers, your materials look as tho' they are sparkling, etc.

Discreet gave me Autodesks reasoning for going with compression as being the best way more computers could view the animation - BUT THEY WENT TO VIDEO! So again, Autodesk dropped the ball. Someone should have known better.

Improper ballots, poor viewing conditions, omitted animations and redundant animations, poor quality - all of this, in my opinion, is simply inexcusable.

A fellow mentor said this evening that he couldn't believe that Dean Kamen is aware of these conditions and there's no way Kamen would allow this to continue if he was. Kamen strikes him as the kind of guy that wouldn't do something if he couldn't do it right. I agree. I dont think Kamen is aware of the generally disgusting treatment of our animations and the indifference flaunted by Autodesk.

Make yourselves heard outside of chiefdelphi forums.

I told Discreet I want the animation competition to be a stand-OUT, not a stand-ALONE. I personally spent many, many hours away from home (3 hrs RT) helping with the animation. I know many of you spent a huge amount of time yourselves; you deserve MUCH better than this.

Dont you agree?

I dunno, this majorly sucks, but you guys have to look at what you did gain probably more of than any other team(at least thats the way it is with our team)-skill. I mean, I cant really put on a resume that I can program PBASIC, its useless(correct me if I'm wrong, I dunno about this). It seems to me that this is the only competition in which every team has an opportunity to use one of the most up to date tools - 3ds MAX. Getting skill in this program is soooo transferrable to many other areas of work. I would venture to say that the self directed animators get a lot more out of this program than engineers or chairmans award. Heck, its because were so self directed...I mean, we have to be, no one has experience with new technology.

Oh yeah, this doesnt mean I think its ok that autodesk is screwing us. Everyone should probably check with their sponsors about getting some better equipment IMO. And dont stop the torrent of E-mails to everyone possible @ autodesk, I'm sure a couple will have to get through.


[edit] I'm not bashing engineering in FIRST here, what it lacks in skills it makes up for in inspiration

FIRST may be about fostering engineering, but...
 

Yes, FIRST is all about engineering, but that's only one part of it. Not every student is interested in engineering, but every student has an opportunity to one day be employed by an engineering-oriented business.

There is much more to building a product (or robot) than the engineering that goes into it, and that's where the remainder of the team shows its value. The animators are producing an advertisement, similar to the company's advertising/marketing department.

Remember that no-one will buy your product if no-one knows it exists, that's what, in essence (and IMHO) the animators do.

On BAE's two teams, there are a slew of talented students on the animation teams who've put a lot of effort into their work, only to have it treated, as someone stated, like the ugly, red-headed, stepchild. No-one should be made to feel slighted, regardless of the "it's all about engineering" mentality. It is for this reason that more students are not interested in the animation as should be. Where are the artistically inclined students? Are they on *your* team as they should be?

Often we hear that "sports for the mind" are given the short coverage in the media, and the "sports for the body" are magnified. What happened to the notion that "smart" people don't have to be recognized for their achievements, that it is only important to have an entire segment on the nightly news that delivers physical sport scores?

Oh, and by the way, the comment that the comedian Michael McDonald (at the Granite State Regional) made about FIRST being "NASCAR for smart people" is somewhat offensive. When he delivered that one-liner, it was pretty funny, but after you stop and think about it, it isn't that funny at all.

Yes, he's right, NASCAR drivers may only turn left all the time, but the engineering that goes into that car is nothing to sneeze about, and I am certain that there are many students in the Detroit area who are looking for employment after graduation at places like GM, Ford and Chrysler. These same people may well be on a factory-sponsored NASCAR team in the future, so what's that say about "NASCAR for smart people"?

I believe that the contributors to this thread are only asking for better treatment and recognition, not special considerations. If enough people from teams across the country complain about the poor treatment of their teammate animators, then maybe FIRST/Autodesk/Discreet will hear the message.

CBP@BAE - Mentor, Merrimack HS "Chop Shop"

Well, Well, Well... It seems that the first weekend of regionals went off like a charm (gag, gag, gag) I will use the heads up given here to make sure our regional goes much better. I plan on contacting the proper people today if posible.

A note on the Artifacting and flashes- If you search previous posts on compression issues- I said very early on that Autodesk was asking for trouble by not specifying compression settings- then when I saw the specifications they gave- I was even more amazed. The entire problem was you take a compressed file and recompress it. This artifacting will happen every time. That was the problem here.

I am also shocked that we are viewing on VHS tape as it defeats the purpose of their compression requests.

As far as the first post on only one team being able to view the animation at one time- I was under the impression that during the judging there was only supposed to be one representative from each team.

The Key here is that you all need to voice you opinion to people that can make the proper changes. Find out who is running your regional and contact them. If its too late for you- then maybe there can be some feedback that will help other regionals and help yours in the future. Dont forget the Autodesk email address. Let them know. I believe that this forum is viewed and heard by FIRST or Autodesk because there are changes this year that are directly related to conversations that happened last year after the nationals.

As far as FIRST being about engineering- Well its supposed to be about Science and Technology- Other wise they'd have to change their name to FIRE- and that doesnt have the same appeal. Animation , Web and Computing ingeneral are all part of Technology. Try running the Segway or the IBot without computers- Fat Chance. Animation is not just about making commercials either- Although thats a big part of what I do- It is and can be used in R&D and illustration of complex medical or scientific procedures that are too expensive or dangerous to produce anyother way (at least in the early stages of a project) There are many aspects to the technology. It can be used for things like the similator that train astronauts or pilots. So don't limit your thinking even if FIRST does.

Good luck to you all and I hope it all works out.

My parting advice is not to run away because its too dificult for you (even if the conditions are crappy and its not your fault) hang in there and try to make things better for those to come. You know your making a difference in your life if you can find a way to leave things better off for those that come after you.
The changes this year are due to the requsets and complaints from the past. So what if Autodesk doesn't have the vision or writing skills (based on incomplete rules) to for see all these problems as many of us did from the second we read the rules this year. Hang in there and lets make it better next year (and this year where ever we can).

The sign of a champion is not your ability to not fall down, but your ability to get back up no matter how many times or how hard you get knocked down.

What a Joke
 

Lev,

I agree with everything you said. I too was excited when I heard that they would have regional animation winners. Then when we got to VCU, I couldn't believe it when they said "Each team should select one student volunteer to judge the animations."
First of all students should not be judging these animations.
Second, they only wanted one student from each team. I noticed your team had 3 students judging the animations which even though that's not what they wanted, would have been a litte better than one.
Third. when we submitted the animation we had to check which conference we were in depending on the Regional we were going to attend. The South Conference had 4 regionals in it. Did all those regionals view the same animations? If so, how do we know if we won at the other regionals?
As far as the order, I agree there was no rhyme or reason to the order of the animations on the tape and some were repeated before some were even shown.
I know it's not all about winning but it is about being inspired. How could a student be inspired when they see that FIRST doesn't care about the animation portion? I had 13 students who worked an average of about 80 hours on our animation. That's a lot of time to spend on something that gets no respect.
I hope FIRST will hear our voices and do something in the future.

There is one thing I was wondering all weekend.
If these are for the each conferences does that mean the other regoinals don't do this? The regoinal animation competition is over or could other teams who aren't present win in other regionals?
The process needs more tweaking.

I asked about the conferences from the start. They never had any purpose until on of the last team updates came out- See FIRST updates page- They finally stated a revision to the rules- that revision is that you will be judged at every regional in your conference. That means you have multiple chances to win- Or the cream will truely rise to the top. But the odds are in your favor if you have a good animation that gets over looked at one particular regional. So if there are 4 regionals in your conf. then you will be judged 4 times (once by the teams at each particular regional)

Yes if you can win in a regional you dont attend- And yes somone can win at yours who isn't there. Autodesk will notify you of this result if needed. I'd look for a resuilts page on the FIRST or Autodesk site if you want to know- I dont know that one exists but it will eventually I think.

I agree that most students wont know exactly what to look for. But I hope they look at them all and use their best and honest judgement. Dont watch 1 or 2 and get bored and then just Vote. Give everyone the same chance that you want. Do'nt go by just Looks alone- make sure you review the criterior for each catagory of the judging.

The animation has always been overshadowed, I just didn't think it would ever go to this level. At the least, we spent two thirds of the time the engineering team did. For the entire competition to be based around robotics, spending a mere 5 minutes dedicated to congratulating the possibly misjudged winners seems rather absurd.
The method of judging them was also faulty. The voting should have been done by professionals, mainly because the students can't be trusted (listen to me). It's likely that their vote could be biased due to their personal taste or just waived towards voting unjustly (such as voting for an animation that's unlikely to win, as to cause the better ones to recieve less votes).
It's probably too late to correct the mistakes the process contained this year, but hopefully this input will make next year's a little more FIRST-like.

Gir
 

I can't say much except that FIRST has wasted all the hundreds of hours of my time, my years of practice and anticipation, my dedication, my team's confidence, and my respect.

BAE Animation Judging Area
 

Attached is a shot of the "ideal" judging area in NH. On the other side of the curtain is the playing field with the pits behind. My student animator, with the yellow Buzz shirt seen in the middle, agrees 100% with what Lev said.

I want to see what happens and observe the process again at UTC this weekend, which is our second regional in the Northeast Conference (checked off BAE Regional only). Will our animation be on the video tape? Will they let us judge again -- will ask but would not do it -- not Graciously Professional?

By the way, we rendered even frames after asking Autodesk what they would use for judging -- VCR/TV or PC (posted their reply on this forum weeks ago) and it still looks lousy.

Hey Buz- I have a bug in the ear of the UTC coordinator for the regional. I am working on getting better conditions than what we've heard of and/or experienced this past weekend. The answer to your question (At least I thought it was a question) is (from what the latest update that I read on the subject)- you will be entered in all conference regionals and I would guess that you'd be able to vote there as well. Here is a copy of the message send via the March 6th EMAIL BAST Update that FIRST sends out:

Greetings Teams:

Qualified entries for the Autodesk Award for Visualization will be judged at all the regional events in the Conference your team selected on your entry form. Your team must be attending at least one of those regional events.

If your animation wins at a regional event your team did not attend, you will be notified by Autodesk that your team has won and is advancing to the professional round of judging. Best of luck!

This does not explicitely say that you will be judging in all regionals as well, while the original rules state that you will be judging only in the regional you choose to for being judged (not an exact quote)- there is an inherent flaw that was never addressed. I supposed there could be a problem with teams that have more money (ie the ability to attend more regionals) having more votes. We are attending UTC as well as the Philidelphia regional ourselves. So we'll get a first hand look at the situation as we experience it.

Good luck to all. This is just the beginning- It only gets better from here.

Just a thought i had about a new way to Judge the animations:

What about if FIRST would play them between matches on the big screen. The majority of the audience is out watching the matches, so why not play the animations out there, so they could be seen by everyone?

Our team was thinking the same thing while they were cleaning up and getting ready for the closing ceremonies, so we all started yelling "ANIMATIONS!!" in unison, and after about 5 minutes they decided to do so.

here's some food for thought. I was reading another thread where somone was saying robot construction was harder than animation. Fine it is, I don't care. But think about this....I've been involved in robotics for 4 years and have gone to 6 regionals thus far (another two this year). As I think back, I can remember every single public speaker that we've ever had at a regional. I have never once even heard of one of these speakers mentioning animation...never. Even Some of the FIRST directors brush of the animations as well. For the 3 years I've done animation I can never remember even Dean (no offense) talking about animation. Why is that animation is cast aside? Is it because we don't work as hard? Is it because we won't have an impact in the world? Is it because this really isn't what FIRST is about?

Sorry I'm really pissed right now. I spent more hours than a can count on this project as well as spending my own money to make a good animation and to have my product dealt with this kind of respect (even if it isn't going to win) is a shot in the nuts. Literally.

I was thinking that you could play them durring lunch. Since nothing is on anyways might as well fill up the time (not sure if they still demostrate fll at competitions anymore).

They were running the animations first thing in the morning at Buckeye.

They played the animations at VCU to fill time while preparing for closing ceremonies. So thats something.

By the way, we contacted Autodesk and they responded. It seems they have been reading our posts on Chief Delphi and appear to be commited to increasing the quality of the competition next year.

I think the reason for student judges was the sheer number of animations they had to judge before. In theory they now have the students weed out the good ones, then their professional judges and max experts judge the ones that win.

While it might be a little to late this year to improve the animation competition at all the regionals, I get the feeling that it will be much different next year.

Keep posting comments and suggestions on Delphi. They are watching.

Well here we are at the end of the UTC New England Regional- Heres What happened. Thanks to all the feedback that I go from last weekends competitions, I contacted the UTC coordinator for the Regional- ahead of time. She was able to move the Judging from the PIT where it was planned to be to a Quiet location in the Hall way to the back room where the VIP's/Judges hung out. Yes it was a Hallway, but the location was limited on space and it was quieter than the PIT would have been- So i'll take it!

The Autodesk Rep didnt show up till 11am on Friday so there was no previewing of the animations on thurs (as the rules stated-from what I remember)

They told us they changed the rule to allow three people judge the animations from each team but they had to collaberate on the one ballot.

Then they played the animations which went one after the other with no collaberation time allowed. So When they were getting ready to kick the teams out for the next 2-teams to come in and judge, I convinced them that it would be better to allow them to sit on the side and view the animations again so that they could score them properly. (The Rep Agreed)

Then I had arranged for the runnerups to be announced, but at the last minute it was pulled from the awards list because the Autodesk Rep told them that the runneruops werent being sent to the championships for judging. Now the rules I read stated clearly that tis was the case- so this is a case of Autodesk Reps not representing what autodesk actually is doing (or what they said they would do, Or maybe they dont know either)

So- The UTC Regional experience was great- Autodesk just screwed up the rest of it. The animations were later played continuously for the rest of friday and all of sat, at the PIT admin table, next to where the scores/rankings were being displayed- this seemed odd at first but became very visable and everyon got a chance to see them.

Thanks to all of you for you comments- If your regional hasnt happened yet, please try to make a difference ahead of time. Hopfully they will listen to you as well.

Chesapeake
 

I was also at the Chesapeake Regional and agree with Lev that the conditions of the animation competition were terrible.

First of all, I want to repeat a couple of the things that I found demeaning about the animation competition:
- About 90% (according to my extremely rough calculations) of the animations will never be judged by or even reach the eyes of professionals or the FIRST crowd in general. My team's animation will probably never be viewed out of my school again (aside from by the occasional internet downloader) after the Philadelphia Regional unless it passes through the extremely subjective judging system. That means that my animation team and I will have done days and days of work for maybe 20 people at most outside my team to see it, unless we're lucky enough to make it to the nationals. Even at the nationals, I doubt that FIRST will publicly spend any more than 5-10 minutes on animation.
- The judging system is really awful. They could have at least given the student judges a rubric or something or divided the scoring into more categories. "Earning" a certain number out of twenty or forty can never tell you how good your animation was or where you need to improve.
These are only 2 of the degrading things about the animation competition, and there were obviously several more discussed earlier in the thread.

Secondly, I have come to believe that FIRST and most of its competitors see the animation competition as a waste of time and animation in general as a worthless skill to be pursued only by artsy-fartsy people who don't like science and math. This is totally wrong. Many of the principles of physics, math, programming, and design, the things that seem to be considered most important by FIRST, are embodied in the animation process. The principal animators of my team are among (if not) the most intelligent and knowledgeable student members on the team in each of these fields.

1) Physics - Take the curve editor for example. When using this tool to animate, one must consider distance vs. time, observe velocity as the slope of the line, and make the acceleration between starting and stopping physically correct. Another example is the use of pivot, or center of mass. In order to realistically portray and object in motion, one must consider its center of rotation. We personally considered physics (including torque, dynamics, friction, centripetal/fugal force, center of mass/gravity [pivot], etc.) throughout our animation.
2) Modeling objects and buildings in animation is a lot like designing a robot in CAD: one must consider (to a slightly more limited extent) scale, structural accuracy, and functionality in motion. A lot of the skills used in modeling carry over into CAD, not to say that animation in itself is not a useful skill in the real world.
3) Programming is usually not directly used at least in the most basic and obvious forms of animation, but the two processes are very similar. In 3dsm, one must constantly consider various functions and commands that affect multiple variables which can represent object orientation, position, scale, etc.

As for animation being harder or easier than designing, building, and programming a robot, I think that each can be more difficult in certain respects.
1) In the design aspect, animation can be equally difficult depending on the amount of detail that one is using in modeling and physical properties.
2) Building a robot is comparable to rendering an animation. The computer makes rendering a whole lot easier, whereas building a robot requires extensive physical effort and therefore more time.
3) According to my friend Mike (mikeXstudios), another member of the animation team who is highly experienced in both programming and animation, animation is significantly more difficult. In animation there are tons of modifiers, sections within the modifiers, and then details past that which can lead to larger windows of details, not to mention lists and lists of creation tools and details for hierarchy. Compared to 3dsm, PBASIC stamp has relatively few commands that the user must be familiar with to achieve functionality.
Taking into account the way in which these three aspects of designing a robot are partitioned among many people and the way that animation is assigned to only a few, it is easy to see that animation can be equally or more difficult. On my animation team (and probably the majority of others across the country) there was really no professional help available and the animators had to work alone with an occasional reminder to stay on task, whereas the students who helped construct and program the robot functioned on the most part under the guidance of engineers and experienced teachers.

Considering all of these aspects of animation, I think that it should be taken much more seriously by FIRST. It uses processes similar to those of designing a robot and requires extensive knowledge in physics, math, design, and aesthetics. In an organization that is trying to promote brainpower over athletic and physical ability, it seems that a new division has come about: the production of the robot and the production of the animation. Sadly, FIRST has chosen to support the more physical side of the competition while basically ignoring the "virtual" (so to speak), even though both require equal amounts of effort and skill. FIRST's hypocritical attitude towards animation really needs to change.

The question remains: What are we going to do about it?

I agree- I have worked on changing the view of our team over the past couple years. Now they are constantly looking for updates and information about what we are doing. This followed through with the right people hooking me up with the right people to make a difference in THIS YEARS UTC New England Regional Comp.

You have to start on your team and get the support to flow upward to the top. Dont sit in the corner by youself (or worse)dont sit at home by yourself, and do your animation and not be involved in the rest of the team and expect to make things change.

The one problem with the PAW room is that it is a seperate room and none of the kids in the PAW room have much to do with building the robot and thus are segregated from the rest of the team.
There is really no soloution to that problem.

151 and 166 had a problem with our Animation team being hidden away in a locked room last year and the year before. Then our Animation mentors left and were replaced, and this year there were students and mentors from robotside coming in all the time. This freaked me out 'cuz of all the pressure to get things done, until I learned that the only reason people hadn't invaded the Animation room last year was because our old mentors wouldn't let them. People do like the animations -- it's cool, even if it's not robotics. And the more exposure kids get to seeing what the weirdos in that side-room are creating, the more likely they are to want to learn 3DS, even if they don't fully switch from robot-work to animation-work. :cool:

The other side of things, getting Animation people out with the robot, really depends on the students in the Animation team. This year all but myself were Animation-only people who didn't even show up for Animation that often. I for one would have done more robot-work, but I didn't have the time since I was doing so much of the animating. :rolleyes:

We are a seperate room but we are connected. I understand if you are not in adjoining rooms- that is difficult to concure. But in the past our animators were as well known and respected on the team because they were involved. They would be at the work tables with tape measures getting dimentions and design info for the animations. They often finished the design on the computer before the builders finished. This year we didn't have our Robot in the animation and that didnt detract from our guys being involved. Every one of the animators were known, liked and respected on the team.

in our case the adjoining computer room is also where the Web designers work (which I also oversee) and most of the computer work from Cad to newsletter to pre-competition scouting (from the web) all took place. So there was a flow of traffic of involved people. And the interest was generated so even those that didnt need computers still took 5-min every now and then to see what was going on.

The more you keep them informed the more they may be curious. We were part of the weekly team meetings as part of the team updates/progess reports. We also had roughed out the animation at verious timed to work on the timing of the Voice and the cuttaway sections- so we actually had stuff to show people that were interested.

Oh man.........did you guys ever have problems with people who wouldn't leave you alone though? Some people just wouldn't leave our room, I got sooo sick of saying "everyone here not on animation leave NOW" cuz some people just didnt get it, even after I said that. Its not that we dont want them to get exposed to animation, its just that they we're in our room when they had other stuff they needed to be doing....and they became kind of a distraction at crunch time.

Yah we have kids comming in distracting the animators.
Some of them wanted to see what we were doing and others just wanted to visit their friends.
I don't mind that as much as when they just want to go goof off on the animation computers. We have other computers in the room for that.

Dag, I'm sorry I didn't see the thread sooner, but yea, the regional event spoke up the idea for all of us animators to band together:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=19213
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=19219

Like I said in another thread, I emailed someone who emailed someone... This is the response I got back from FIRST, regarding the issues that we've been discussing here:

> Thanks. I rarely read CD but I did review this with the Autodesk
> contact. We will try to improve some things but many venues do not have
> good space available. We will try to make some corrections this week but
> I am not sure it can be done everywhere since we frequently have to spec our
> space needs when contracts are drawn in the summer. Unfortunately getting
> another room is not straight forward.
>
> We discussed the conference method and Autodesk is adamant. They want to
> have the top animation win and some events only have five or six
> submissions. There is a lot of issues the teams do not understand and
> they do impact the judging.
>
> Definitely lots to review at the end of the season

I totally agree with Eugene Marinelli. His striking arguments have been carefully contrived, and he has throughly presented many great points.

In robot designing and building, students have mentors and engineers helping them, while students working on animation usually do not have mentors or anyone with an astute knowledge of the program. Students have to take it upon themselves to meticulously learn the program and produce an animation all by themselves! Usually, the animation team is encompassed by no larger than 5 students. Throwing a few callow students into an industrial 3d modeling and animation program, and telling them to learn and build an animation in less than 6 weeks is an impressive task to accomplish.

The importance of the animation should be held at the same level as the other wonderful aspects of FIRST.