Animation Winners at Nats
 

I haven't quite cooled off regarding this topic yet, so my apologies if I offend anyone by being mean here.

There were only two awards, and I think it was a mistake to get rid of the other three; unless there weren't five good animations, which maybe in Autodesk's opinion there weren't. Quite frankly, I wonder whether Autodesk people or Ted Boardman had anything to do with the judging process.

Team #1182 got Rookie award. I *think* I know which one that is -- one of the rookie animations that Ted Boardman showed during his speech on Thursday. Bouncing FIRST logo shapes, right? That was a fun one. Good materials and lighting and animating, good concept, good job. It would've been nice if FIRST had actually shown their animation during the ceremony.

And the Grand Prize winner... congratulations to team #967. Their entry was slick. It was a good concept. They did an amazing job and should be proud of their work, and I'm not just saying that to be nice; heck, their narration was incredible, I would pay that guy money to do such a good job narrating for an animation my team'd do. Only, only, only........ 967's entry wasn't an animation. I'm not even sure if it was 3DS they used for the little animated bits that were there; someone on my team said they it looked like an animation from Inventor. I was too distracted by the fact that it was so primarily not-CG, so I probably missed some things.

I'm... um... confused. When they played the winning animation, for awhile I wondered if they were accidentally playing a Chairman's entry instead of a Visualization one; then I tried to convince myself that the people there were 3D models. Nope. Personally, I thought that either the team with the crayon-animation, or team #103, should have won, at least out of the animations I saw on Einstein. There may have been other good ones that I missed, and maybe if you're better at looking past technical gimmicks, other teams did better. But even if technical skill isn't everything, that doesn't mean it should be nothing.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Anyone from team #967? Feel free to tell me I'm wrong; I prefer to think that I'm crazy than that the people in charge are. (Although, that does seem to be the theme of the times...)

(967, I'm not trying to be mean, still a little upset about this, I don't want to get you mad)

I know that when I saw the winning animation, me and the other 2 students from the animation team were all mad. The only use of max that I saw in that was the robot that kept flashing on, maybe they didn't quite understand that its called "Animation" for a reason.
Was max used for combining them, and thats why they thought it was so good?
Our team used some real video in our animation, (someones head in a space suit) but that wasn't 90% of the animation. I remember seeing another one like that at UTC, only the video was all of it, except for titles on paper

When they were presenting the awards, did anyone notice how many people clapped for animation, compared to how many clapped for the winning robots :(
And how, the animation was seemed to be made part of the Lego league? Maybe "Going back to FIRST robotics" would have been nice in between the awards.

Well, what can you do for this year? But for next year..maybe better specify the rules (If there were rules, please link me to them)

At least they were running animations all day.
Personally I thought 342's animation was the best.

Are the winning animations posted anywhere yet? I really would like to see those, but the site that the rules say should have them have not been updated for a year...

I think that the rules should definitely clarified for next year. I saw the video as more of an advertisement and I was really surprised that autodesk representatives would pick an animation that barely utilized the tools their company donates. This isn't sour grapes or anything because we weren't in the running, I just thought it was an odd choice.

Congratulations all the same:)

i am mostly upset by the lack of respect that first has given us animators, we put in more hours of work than the students who built the robot only to have a guy from autodesk stand there talk fast and disregard quite how much work was put into inventor, and visualization.

they also eliminated the honorable mentions, which recognized many of the teams which had done very well and yet weren't exactly what every judge liked.

excellent content communication and slick presentation to 967! I'm not trying to bash u guys at all.

i am also just wondering how much work you all put into your animations. For us it was at least like a couple hundred hours a person.

one more thing i noticed was that the "random" matches were less random than ever, we were teamed with/against the same group of teams the entire competition, i saw the same about 18 robots the whole competition.

lastly, was it just me, or is it upsetting to anyone else how the competition is turning into a spectator "battlebots" type of competition basically, every year the competition is less and less complex and rely more on speed and power, than skill to manipulate field objects. also, they are focusing more and more on winning, which i believe should be more of a side goal to the learning and inspiration that first is founded upon.

I must say that every team did extremely great jobs this year, i was amazed how great even all the rookie teams were.

Yeah, I was really surprised by how the whole Autodesk awards went. Team 967's animation had a slick presentation and awesome narration (Great Job!). But, a lot of the animation could have been done without 3ds max. It almost seems like Autodesk didn't even read the guidelines they provided. Also, why was called it Grand Prize? Wasn't it "Autodesk Visualization Award" at the regionals. Everything just seemed confusing on the autodesk end.

Hopefully next year FIRST will give some more thought and respect to the animation awards.

I dunno, that was a pretty good concept and very good creativity on the part of 967...but I'm pretty pissed. The amount of work we put in to this is crazy. Everything in our animation might just as well been live footage. I probably could have gotten some footage of mars, or a bomb defuser bot, or submarines(for those of you who havent seen our animation, that stuffs iin there) and it would have been easy for us to get footage of someone driving the robot. And why not? It probably looks better than our animation. Because real life does look better than what most people can do in 6 weeks on a computer. This is an ANIMATION award....we could have done it in 1 weekend if we used real life footage...and all we would have needed was Flash and maybe premiere, screw 3ds MAX, it would be unnneccessary.

To be fair, however, it is mostly our mistake. Nowhere does it say we may not use liberal amounts of live footage, and Content and Creativity are both bigger than technical.

Maybe the title of this forum should be renamed to "Vizualization Competition".

Ah, forgot some stuff. About the lack of respect...I was extremely pissed that they didnt even treat this like a real award...they announced it and everything but they had shown the same video earlier on the einstein field for those of us who might have been watching. They eliminated all pretext of suspense and they even skipped right over the rookie animation award. What is the deal with that?

I'm also upset with the results of the visualization competition. (By the way, I started writing this before the last few posts, so I'm probably repeating some stuff) I do realize that it is called the "visualization" award and not just the "animation" award, but I think it's not very fair to the animators that an entry comprised almost entirely of video clips, no matter how good it is in content and creativity, should win a national award that is widely assumed to be (based on past winners national winners and autodesk's sponsorship of the award) about 3d animation.

I'm not saying that team 967's entry is undeserving of recognition for its entry; it had great content communication and creativity. It was very well done, and the team did nothing wrong by submitting it. The problem, as I see it, is that the "technical execution" part of autodesk's judging system is corrupt. It's extremely unreasonable to compare student-made computer animation to live video, especially when technical execution is 20% of the grade. Personally, I don't think an entry that only uses live footage deserves much credit for technical execution. Recording something on a camcorder is a bit less technically demanding than producing an entire scene in 3ds max. Because of this, I think they should have a separate competition for video only.

If my animation team and I had known that the judges had a preference for video, we would have gotten the media crew to make something. Instead, in our ignorant suppositions, we spent countless hours planning the animation, learning 3ds max, and eventually applying advanced techniques in mapping, materials, modeling, animating, rendering, lighting, camera-ing, etc. to create our animation. Before the deadline, I remember spending a week of 15-hour days on nothing but perfecting and finalizing the animation, not even stopping to eat lunch or dinner. This was all during a huge snowstorm that dropped more than 2 feet of snow and almost completely blocked the roads to my school; I was actually considering spending the night in the computer room. All of this was even after my 4-animator team spent 3 to 4 weeks working on the animation at school and at home.
Because of autodesk's decision, it almost feels like I wasted my time. I might as well have taped a few of my team's meetings, set aside a couple of nice days to string some clips together, and taken a half an hour to render 2 or 3 simple images of the engineer-made robot. Animation takes more time, effort, and skill than clipping live footage, and I think it also deserves more recognition.

I know that I'm not giving team 967 a whole lot of credit for their technical work; it probably took a more significant amount of time than I'm suggesting. Again, it was very well done, and it does deserve recognition. However, I think that it's extremely discouraging to the vast majority of animators to see an entry that required almost no expertise in 3D animation winning the national prize.

Autodesk suggested that animation was the best way to go in their directions in the manual. They continually refer to entries as "animations" and only say one short phrase suggesting that live video is even acceptable. Even if they do say that live video can be used, it seems to indicate that having students use autodesk products is their main purpose for even having the competition.
The information about the award in the manual specifically says things like:
"Content communication - Distinction in the use of animation to illustrate and communicate a specific aspect of what FIRST means to your team"
"Compelling Creativity - Distinction in the use of animation to generate excitement about your team’s experience with FIRST."
"The challenge is to demonstrate how skillfully you use specific Autodesk products."

Finally, I remind you that team 967's entry was very well done, and I have nothing against it. The real problem is with autodesk and their inconsistencies between what they say and how they judge.

The way it went this year with autodesk make me want to womit!

I am not an animator. But I do know how much work goes into the Animation! On my old team we have a separate team to do the animation, you can ether do the robot or the animation. Its like a full time job!

First and formost i think that the opinion of 20-50 people at the regionals counts more than that of those 5 or so people at autodesk. Some of the animations won at more than 1 regional which says alot about them. Means people that dont even know that team think that thier animation is supperb to the others.

Did you nothice how autodesk added 2 more animations per a regional in like the 4th week! So now the top 5 teams at each regional we running for the championship. Hmmm well that was nice for all of those teams that were now in. Makes me wonder did autodesk do this because the same animations kept winning (and getting 2nd and 3rd) at the different regionals.

Or maybe they did it because someone they wanted to win didn't win at the regional level and wouldn't advance. I looked hard and it seems to me that 967 was not on any regionals top 3 animations. You would think that it would be one of the regional winners like 1182 WON fair and square 2 regionals. they totaly deserve thier award.

I pretty much think at this point that autodesk is currupt to the max :mad: :mad: :mad:

I am glad i never paid any money for thier software. And I NEVER will.

i think there are teams that deserve the award more: such as 103, 192, 343, 1182, 74, 75. Those teams in public are THE BEST!

I have seen many animations, and there are many that I haven't seen. But I trust the people that voted those animations at more than 1 regional to be the best in thier opinions.

That said GO SolidWorks!

If your oppinion is not the same as mine on this issue and you have a problem with my opinion, i care not!

I am not one of the members on the movie team, but I am very close to all of them. We were (obviously) all ecstatic that we won. Was it fair that we did? I am going to go out on a limb and say that it probably was not. The almost complete lack of cg art was the reason that we did not win at regionals, and we made it into nationals because we were selected by a panel of judges who thought that the movie was worthy.
As a rookie member, I'm not completely up on what usually wins the award that we recieved, however it seemed to me that they were looking for a movie that effectively and beautifully used multimedia to convey the message of FIRST. To this extent, I think that we did a very good job, but the work we did was not equivilant to the amount of work that is needed for good 3ds max animation.

It just occurred to me that it would have been reasonably fair if 967 had won the Honorable Mention for Content Communication. If, of course, such an award still existed.

Remember last year when someone asked Ted if we could use Maya? Or something like that. And he said you could, but the judges would be able to tell you hadn't used Max.

I've had a little time to think before I posted, so that I didn't say someting I regret. Personally, I didn't think ours was the best, I kept on thinking that 103 or 192 was going to beat us, because both were very excellent. 103, I believed told a similar story but was done much better.

So, with this said, I believe autodesk has just shot itself in the foot. Why? Simple. Look at the trends of the year before, and how the animation turns out the next year. Verybody always tries to a take a piece of the winning animation and incorpoate it into theirs, we kinda did this year. It's the concept of the year before that people try to come as close to copying, without making it look to obvious. AT least when brainstorming that happened with us.

So next year, when some rookie teams and 1st or 2nd year animation teams see this one, they'll believe that they have a good chance with live video. If a live video one can win this year, why couldn't it win next year, and it would be pretty easy to copy the winning one. I mean if I was around next year, I'd be looking into something with live video. SOoooo, this competition is about to go spiralling downward because it will be less about computer animation and more about everything else.

Let me have some feedback, to see if what I'm saying makes any sense.

Well just to clear the air... (Forgive the long post- I could type much more here)

Paragraph 6.1 on page 17 of THE AWARDS DOCUMENT states that the award is given for a submission using 3ds Max.

Paragraph 6.2 states that the award recognizes a 30 SEC Student ANIMATION- Not MOVIE or VIDEO. (Oh and notice the STUDENT part- some teams have trouble with this one too!)

The further description of the entry guidelines does state that you can use video. However if you don't have 30sec of animation then you technically are following the rules.

For those of you that think this to be a discrepancy in the rules- let me clarify. You can achieve both by incorporating live footage into the and other wise 3D Scene. or you can incorporate 3D into an otherwise Live Footage Scene.

One of the Honorable Mentions last year- Sunny Thumper I think (which I also believe is from the Gila Monsters on the West Coast, but don't hold me to that) Used a technique that he described in a post- in the post 2002 threads last year. He used live bg footage and used advanced 3DS techniques to map the footage and have the proper camera angles and perspectives. Other than the Instant Reality that is achieved- It is actually much harder to do this- especially if there are moving cameras.

There is nothing wrong about using Live footage- as long as it follows the rules.

That all said- I agree with everyones conclusion. I am an animation mentor and I work very hard to help the students achieve their final result. As you may have read in the second post above- We used a live actor (student on our team) and we set up a green screen shoot and recorded a chest up shot of him going through the monolog. then we composited him into a space suite as he floated above the earth (we were vying for a spacewalk from NASA but our teams budget didnt allow for it!). There was 30sec of animation because we never left the CG created environment. This is an example of how to follow the rules.

I believe our animation to be close to or some place within the top 10 of the ones I saw. Unfortunately I didnt have the winner anyplace near that. A couple of posts above me talked about the fact that because of the lack of winners they advanced the top 5 animations- Even with that there were only 43 teams (before the final week of competition. There is no excuse for the best teams to be over looked by professional judges. I can understand when there were over 200 submissions, but not 43.

This year the judges went down hill. I'm not trying to insult the team that won, it wasn't any wrong doing on your part. I don't know where the previous post gets off talking about collusion with autodesk. Thats just plain not right. But adding live action this way isn't anything new and wasn't especially creative- many animations have done it in the past that only difference is they didn't win. So content communication would really be the only high score that was possible for this type of animation.

All I know is the second it was over one of our team advisors who also teaches media communications in the HS turned to me and said "What was that?" He also doesn't mean to insult any one and would never make a comment like that if he was watching them all play and that was just in the mix. But he saw many of the animations and he teaches video and media communications in the school and when this was played as the winner- He was shocked- and I dint have to say a thing. Then without any prompting from me- because I was too pissed to even bring it up- every engineer and teach at some point or another asked me why that entry won. Unfortunately I have no answer.

Just to finish off a long post with a question- How did they make it to the Championships anyway. Some of you must have voted for them to some degree. So before this was an issue of Autodesk Judges, you must look at yourselves (at least those that were in the concerned conferences).

All and all I think there was a great job done by many many teams and the rookie entries that Ted showed on Thurs were great animations in general and not just good rookie animations.

Regardless of the results, be proud of what you all did and strive forward to step up and separate yourself from the pack.

Great Job to All!

The winning animation looked like it was supposed to be the losing animation. I don't care who I am offending but there were many much better looking and creative animations out there than this excuse for one. More than half of it was video-taped footage with a narrator explaining what first means (when you were supposed to ANIMATE what it meant). And if you look at the only 3d-animated bits that they showed, well.. they were pretty bad too. In those few seconds I noticed the lack of materials and proper motion. I don't know what Autodesk or whoever judged used to judge those animations, but it wasn't their brains.

( I bet they threw darts for each animation and the highest score won)

In conclusion, I am mad.

:rolleyes: How could they be able to do that??? :confused:


About live-action video, I think it should be ok if it is used in conjuction with 3D, to a certian degree.

Example: If the foreground is composed mostly of live-action people, and the background is all CGI that is comparable to FF and SW, then I would have to say that, in my opinion, it can be considered animated.

Even better, having live-action people in contact (I know there is a better way of saying that but I can't think of it right now) with CGI caricters.

Example: The scene in Episode II when OB1 is hugging Dex.

This thread is turning into a "let's bash 967 for winning" sour grapes fest.
Let's all back up for a minute and think about how to air our grievances without attacking a team that did nothing wrong than submit in a work. Just becuase it doesn't meet your standards does not give everyone licsence to beat on these kids.
Let's remember gracious porfessionalism please.

I Agree with ED. There is no reason to insult anyone. As long as my previous post was, I tried my best to not insult anyone. I hope I succeeded, please have the same cutesy- As we can all find issues with each of our animations. I know we have issues because we ran out of time and couldn't re-render the final changes we actually made. Show me any animation and I can tell you how to improve it. So no stone throwing.

Thanks ED and all!

I tried editing my other post, but it wouldn't let me attach.

I agree with you <EDIT>On both of your posts</EDIT> totaly, stevek. The only major problem is the camera angles.

I have attached a pic of two of our team members where the background has been removed and replaced by a CGI background.

<EDIT>

I hope I didn't offend anybody with my posts.

</EDIT>

Well....
 

Thanks for the narrating comment, the narrator by the way is the man from the jeep commercials, he did it for FREE. As for not being worthy our vid crew was amazed we won because of the lack of animation, but as I pointed out to them the idea was solid, narrating was good and the maybe the 10 sec of video was very high quality compared to others. The chain on the robot and the tubs were hard from what I've heard. And like it said, Expect the Un-expected, how often do you see complete animation in any kind of serious video? Autodesk in my opinion is one little tool in many. For example the video and sound that was in the video came from tons of hours and hard work. I think the award has risen the bar, now teams must think of things like cinematography, live video, GOOD narrating, etc. Not just 30 sec. of animation that looks cool. Any way that is one of my points of view. I'm still kind of shocked we won it too!

6.3 Scoring Criteria
Content Communication (40pts) - Distinction in the use of design and animation to illustrate
and communicate a specific aspect of what FIRST means to your team.
Entries are measured in terms of how well your team clearly and accurately articulates that
aspect of FIRST.
Drawing from your team members, your school and corporate partnership, your community
involvement, and/or your robot: Illustrate and communicate a specific aspect of what FIRST
means to your team. Using graphic imagery and animation developed with 3ds max™ (as well as
other Autodesk products if you wish), create an informative and clearly focused 30 second spot
about a particularly appealing or effective aspect of FIRST. You must include a statement in
your animation as to what “appealing aspect of FIRST” you are trying to communicate. Think of
what you are producing as being a 30 second “spot” that might be intended for use on national
television to inform viewers about FIRST and to illustrate a specific aspect of the benefits of the
FIRST experience. Examples of Appealing Aspects of FIRST: Mentorship, Collaboration,
Leadership and/or Community.
Compelling Creativity (40pts) - Distinction in the use of design and animation to generate
excitement about your team’s experience with FIRST.
The challenge is to tell a compelling, creative story about what FIRST means to your team, about
your team or your robot, or about your team’s participation in The Competition – and to make
that story memorable. We measure in terms of how well your team identifies a concept and
organizes the content for your 30-second story, and by how well your team executes on that
concept and creates a distinctive and memorable spot – one that stands out from the rest.
Technical Execution (20pts) - Distinction in the application of Autodesk software.
The challenge is to demonstrate how skillfully you use specific Autodesk products and how your
final animation is brought together from storyboard through design, production, editing, adding
FX and sound, and post-production to final product.
Entries are measured in terms of how well your team uses modeling, materials application,
lighting, camera motion and angles, sound effects, texture mapping, color, special FX, character
animation, editing technique, voice over, music, photography, or live video.or live video.

I know our team (75) tried really hard to work on content communication with a creative twist. ( http://stage.itmediaco.com/roboraide...le=Team75_2003 )

Team 967's was really good, but I just don't know if their 3D was ambitious enough. We attempted a fully CGI character that would be on screen for 25 seconds! Lots of voice acting! Do you think autodesk would not consider us because we won inventor? Honorable mentions should be back next year, because all the other teams that worked hard on their animation should get some recognition.

Anyways, congrats to team 967, it was still an awesome clip!

I already mentioned this but I will be concise- It says you can use live video. But it also say in the previous paragraphs that it must by 30Sec of Animation. There is only one way to have both rules work together and that is to mix live action with animation. That means on the screen at the same time. Otherwise you would never full fill the previous requirements. We used video in ours as well, and that was a half day of shooting on a greenscreen sound stage so that it could be incorporated in the 3D environment. SEE OUR MEDIA PAGE

That said- I do want to congratulate your Entire Team. You entered, you were judged, and you won. So CONGRATS

i didn't go to nationals but i did see this great animation that won at west michigan regional. team number 74. they had the best animation i have ever seen for FIRST. the textures, shading, lighting, and animation itself was excellent. the stuck with the theme of theirs and with the theme of FIRST. I don't think anyone was angry about them winning. they were the best and i would have been angry if anyone else won...even my team. they were that good.


Team # 74

YOU GUYS DID AN AWESOME JOB ON YOUR ANIMATION!!!!!!!!!

from all of team 902

Does anyone have a copy of the winning/runner up animations?

Autodesk pretty much asked for a commercial. I would definitely say the animation that won was one hell of a commercial.

heh....thanks sooooo much. But did you see team number 103, team number 192, or team number 75's animation? I think there are links to them on the "Post a link to your animation here" thread, except for 192, which is on their web page(just go to www.usfirst.org and look for them). Our animation was not the most seamless of them all, and it definitely had some flaws. 103 was basically perfect in this regard. 75 had awesome content + creativity. and 192 had a lot of cool stuff too. We dont think we put as much work into our content communication as we needed too, and maybe our message was a little too similar to the winning one last year. Thanks for the compliment though!

oh yeah, I hope we can finally upload ours somewhere....

Aside from the winning animation lacking 3d stuff, it brings up an interesting idea. Maybe next year FIRST should have a commercial contest. Autodesk makes combustion which would be perfect for doing a real professional job. The benefits could be that the commercials show people on FIRST teams and the commercials could be used as promotions for FIRST. 967 definitely had a great commercial, a little more so than an animation.

uhm yea but its missing more than half of all of those

T967, is there any way you can post a copy of your animation? Some of us poor mentors weren't able to make it out to Houston..

Maybe on your team; not so on many others.

You may want to check out last year's submission from team 166 -- they won an Honorable Mention, and they used video in it (a clip of Ralph Bayer, the inventor of Pong). That animation can be downloaded from: http://www.baesystemsfirst.org/team1...mall_movie.avi

According to Derek (the kid who made virtually (;)) all of that animation), they did NOT use video and animation simultaneously for that clip... on the other hand, the clip clearly does not overpower the animation.

Last year my team, 166, used only video for the first several seconds for the animation, and we won Content Communication. The rest was all animated. While i was quite amazed that the winning animation had so much video in it, i was impressed because it is very difficult to make a presentation that incorporates both video and 3d studio max and still looks good. I think that Autodesk should have been more clear on their expectations though. We were under the impression that most of the presentation should be strictly animated. I know that last year when we decided to use video, i was reluctant to use too much because i thought that autodesk would give us less credit for using video.

Also, i was very mad that they got rid of the honorable metions, since that is what my team won last year. FIRST gives out awards to the robots that are finalists but not champions, why cant animation be the same way:mad:

I think that everyone should stop complaining about the winning animation just because it was different and unexpected. Judges like the unexpected. The animation was great. It was excellent at creativity and content communication. From passed experiance i know that using video and animation together requires technical skill. Also, keep in mind that technical excellence is the least important. I congratulate Team 967 for a job well done.:) :)

well i meant to say that as in that we [animators] deserved recognition of our hard work as much those who build the robot.

967 member of visualization
 

I understand how you feel about our visiualization. This was our first year doing this. Only me and another kid knew anything at all about animating with 3ds max and we were both busy with other aspects of our team. By the way, we did spend a lot of time modeling the robot and figuring out how to animate falling blocks with reactor. Haha..

So the voice...
that was me j/k
it was actually a jeep guy we had to do our voice paid for by rockwell collins our sponsor

WE OWE HIM ALOT

aight... fa sho
anyway i heard our animation should be posted on discreet and eventually on our website at www.lmrobotics.com

more later
gota run

more...
 

we weren't expecting to win this because we didn't really get a chance to see previous years entries until after we were finished, and we realized that ours was maybe what wasn't expected. it definitely suprised us

I think we probs got high marks for mixing different types of media into a good final product. We used many programs to do this:

Autodesk 3ds max for the model of the robot and the final scene where bins were knocked over - Peter Wong and Eric Lee (me)
Adobe After Effects for the text - Matt Craig
Adobe Premiere for transitions, putting everything together - Matt Craig and Eric Lee
Virtualdub (free product!) for converting some clips - Eric Lee
Adobe Illustrator for logos, title screen, and end screen - Peter Wong
Adobe Photoshop for logos, title screen, and end screen - Peter Wong
Tmpgenc for mpeg conversion - Eric Lee

For people that say video is easy...it's not either... we took hours of video before we found good quick clips

We did sort of run out of time, and barely got this sent in. Next year Matt and I return so we both hope to dive deep... deep...deep (like blackstreet - deep.mp3) into 3ds max over the summer, so at least half of our visualization can be animated. We like the use of both video and 3ds max.

You have to understand the situation that we didn't have a computer capable of running 3ds max until december when i (and some others) assembled a computer (recommendation: dual athlon mps). We had very little time to learn the program. We basically only had my computer (that i built also) and our school computer that were capable of running the program. If you wonder why we weren't rookie team winner, it's because i forgot to check mark the box on the application.

I scored the visualizations at st. louis so i saw many of the entries, and i admit i thoroughly enjoyed them. Team 1182, excellent job! They actually won our regional, and i did pick them. Great work, great message, great animation!

thats my take

yeah, I was thoroughly impressed with 1182's animation and I can see why it beat us at St. Louis and Canada. Even more impressive was the fact that it was a rookie animation. Great job!

dont get me wrong guys, u guys had an excelent entree for the award and were well deserving. by the way that voice shook me out of my seat. transitions were awesome and the whole concept was cool. (especially since you didnt get to check out previous winners!)


but, i think many other teams had great submissions (i cant really call them purely animations anymore) as well, and with the amount of time allocated to autodesk awards, the lack of honorable mentions, and how when i looked around i was the only one standing and clapping to all the winners, i was disapointed with how FIRST was treating all of the people who worked extremely hard.

I hope next year they get their act together and show more respect.

excelent job again guys, any company would have paid big bucks for a commercial like that! (haha, first has all the rights to it now tho{for free too} :p)

is there a version of the winnin animation online?

Personally I thought the "Crouching Tiger" Animation was one of the best last year- I didnt agree with those results either. I've been on lots of competition teams in my past, I follow the rules as best I can to the letter of the law and I always take myself out of the mix when considering who should win. This way I can be as unbias as possible. I was upset that the above mentioned animation didnt win let alone get an honorable mention next to the ones that did win and get HM's. If you want to know why- take the next 6-months and try to do it yourself.

It pisses me off when the Judges who SHOULD know the rules, dont follow them. (and dont tell me that they are volunteers- because so am I) Because there are plenty of teams that do follow the rules and there are plenty of them that I felt were better picks. If you are looking for surprise and differences- do so within the rules. "30 Sec of Animation using 3DS Max" means 30Sec of animation using 3DS MAX. They dont say, if you happen to do animation for somepart of your 30sec spot- why dont you try this free $3500 software program that we throw in the kit for you. I am a professional animator and graphic designer. I know what it means to "combine" live and CG in a scene. Cutting from one to another is not combining. If You were watch Starwars Ep.II and you see a closeup shot of Anakin Skywalker that cuts to the other side of the universe to show Yoda, do you think- wow that's a great combination of Live Action and CG? I dont think so. But when JaJa and OB1 interact and react in the same scene you think- wow that was awesome. Or in Ep-I the pod races were all done with a combination of CG, Live, and I think Miniatures as well. Thats Combining CG and Live.

All they had to do for this animation (ant the Pong one last year)is place the video in a CG environment and everything would be OK.

I've done promo's for CMT channel that involved a huge CG projection Screen that played live video while CG lights and text and smoke all were layered on top. Ive alos made TV and Computer screens within a CG environment that played video in it. This is "Combining" Ive also done training videos where the store backgrounds were all CG or a city scape that contained the actors. Then there was a Stephen King Commercial that had a CG Skeleton and CG cemetary and the stormy sky and Foreground mail boxes (that recieve the latest SK book through the mail) were all Live footage.

Thats all I'm gunna say on the subject. If you disagree with me- Read the rules first so you can tell me where I'm wrong, then send me a private message because I'm not comming back here. All it does is make the winners feel bad or get them pissed at us and neither one is good or necessary. Just move on and get ready for next year. I am by no means implying that they should reconsider their selection and take back any trophy. This is just not a good path to go down.

I have to say that the winning animation was very well put together, presented a clear message, and came out very professional. However, I would've preferred to see a team like 21 win, who used what John Lassiter calls "common sense animation." Basically, what that means is that they presented a clear and interesting story, didn't rely on swooping camera angles and other gimmicks, and rendered something that could look believable given the technological contrainsts (this is why Lassiter's Pixar, which made such movies as Toy Story, has been so successful). There animation with marionetts was very cute.

I think that there should be an award for the type of submission that we saw win, perhaps some kind of "promotional media" award. This is basically what the Chairman's awards had turned into in the past few years, and I know that many teams were sorry to see that aspect of it go. However, I don't think that the Autodesk Visualization Award is the place for it (or if it is, there should be a seperate Autodesk Animation Award).

Also, I was very dissapointed with the way that the Autodesk rep announced the awards. It was very anti-climatic. There was no sense of suspense or drama, and by announcing the team number first, and then describing the animation and the team, all of his comments were drowned out by cheers.

actually they showed both the winning inventor and visualization awards somewhere around match 110 (when we were out on the field) On einstein's screens. WE couldn't figure out why it won at all then, and after talking to ted, he didn't have a good explanation either. So, ohh well, autodesk screwed up big this year, maybe we can hope for more respect next year.

My experience:
1999 - Maybe we'll get more respect next year.
2000 - Maybe we'll get more respect next year.
2001 - Maybe we'll get more respect next year.
2002 - Wow, they added honorable mentions. Still, we'd really like some recognition OUTSIDE of the 10 minutes in the awards ceremony.
2003 - Regional animation awards! Wow!.... Oh, these are a tremendous screw-up, and it seems like we're getting even MORE ignored now. Fantastic.

Hoping for the best hasn't done much. Constant lobbying has done little. The only thing we can really do is hope to get one of our own on the inside of FIRST and make some changes. I would LOVE to be that person, but I'm only a college freshman :-/

Also, ahecht, thank you very much for your kind comments. I'll pass them on to the rest of the animation team. However, being that we didn't even make the top 5 at any of our regionals, it's really surprising to see how many people wanted ours to win.

Basically Autodesk is on crack.
End of story.

Mmn...
 

No, it's not "end of story"; rather, it should be the beginning. Yes, Autodesk has made a lot of our lives unnecessarily difficult, but don't you think a company of their capacitance would have the ability to make some major changes? I know that general experience proves us wrong, but we can only slam our heads against the wall so many times until something happens (either change or a near-fatal aneurism). I don't think Autodesk-bashing is going to help; we ought to identify what the precise problems are, separate those we can improve from those out of our hands, and move from there.

---
"Why can't you animate yourself a reality check?" ---an ever-so-supportive team member

i would like to see animators unite to create a union that could present a proposal to FIRST and Autodesk...

i think they were discussing something like this before, maybe we could assemble our own panel of judges or self judge animations such as at regionals. (when a team wins a regional they should automatically be taken out of the running for any other submitted regionals)

i duno.. i just feel really disapointed this year (my second year doing animation)

i agree there isnt much we can do about this year, i hope that we could unite to make next year more enjoyable.

l8r

ps- awesome job to everyone this year

Well, when they had the "self-judging" aspect at regionals, many people complained about the lack of experience many of the student judges had (hope no one complained about me ^_^). This also led to some "cool" but content-weak animations doing well... but I liked it and hope they continue with it, but just for regionals, maybe with a screening process for student judges. Nationals should stick with the pros.

As for taking regional winners out of other regionals, you would end up with 15 or so different animations per conference advancing... I very much doubt there were 15 good animations per conference which means the whole purpose of regionals "weeding out" the good from the not so good is lost

651's Animation
 

I was not a member of our Animation team but I saw first hand how hard our two kids worked on it. They both learned it on their own and they had no help. They literally spent hours there working on it and I did not think the team that won deserved to win because of the lack of Animation that was involved. I think next year the judge's should look more at the content of the animation. Our animation was a complete 30 second animation with a clear message of the meaning of FIRST to us and I think that's what the whole competion was about. Don't get me wrong, everyone did a great job on there's but I think we need to look more at the principles of the animation and not just 10 seconds of animation and the rest video clips. Congratulations to all teams deserving of their awards!

Even if you took into account that the majority of the competition was based off of content and creativity, I'm still not satisfied. In my opinion, Team 75 did a much better job at explaining their aspect of first, and their animation had soooo much style. It might not have had the best Technical Execution, but neither did 967....

Also, how the heck did 192(I think its 192, the one with the crayons) lose to 967? I really dont get this...they had a very good message, it was creative, and for tech execution it must have gotten near a 20! Now it couldnt be too far behind 967 in content and creative, but it must have massacred 967 in technical execution!

I really think that many teams this year DID neglect the content communication and creativity aspect. I know we did. The Flash text across our animation was pretty much an afterthought.

I think one of the major problems with the judging here is the points for creativity. I mean, its sooooo subjective. To rate animations on a scale for creativity is almost impossible, cuz its just not defined very well in the criteria. Autodesk really needs to clearly communicate our objectives for this award. In my opinion, a movie trailer is creative, but not the most creative presentation in the world. I also think that the talking guy on a white screen in 75's animation is incredibly creative. However, its obvious the judges have different opinions.

What kind of creative do they want? Do they want something which is professional and subdued(kind of like last years) or something with a more interesting twist(like the movie trailer). My point is, there are very different levels of creativity, but these levels are not necessarily better than each other! When working for a business, it should be obvious what kind of animation you are going for, because you know your target audience and you know what kind of style they would like to see for your particular product. In this case, we have no clue what our audience is, except for the fact that they work for autodesk. Its easy to win a regional animation, because we hang out with our target audience. However, its near impossible to understand what the judges will think of an animation that is a little unproffessional. Will they shrug it off and say "ahhh, its made by kids, whatever" or will they say "its not professional enough, 20 pts off".

Basically, my entire rant can be summarized in my opinion that autodesk does not clearly communicate our objectives.

Thanks for all the compliments. Our animators, like many other teams, really put a lot of thought into the communication of our message.

As an Inventor designer, I also feel the lack of recognition for Animators and Inventor designers in FIRST. In the upcoming months, team 75 will be launching an online community for FIRST animators and inventor designers to promote, recognize and award exceptional animations/renders. Works wil be judged by both your peer animators/inventor designers as well as (hopefully) a panel of professionals. The lack of recognition for many animations at regionals and at championships is alarming; we need to encourage and reward all the animators and inventor designers whose work was left unnoticed. Besides giving out awards, we also plan to provide better ways to showcase these animations through television networks as well as securing an area of the pits at every regional to set up viewing booths (yes, with quality sound and screens) so that anyone can view these little animated wonders.

As Xavior mentioned, we need to start a sub-organization that caters to the needs of Animators and Inventor designers: mostly people who work hours upon hours behind the scenes.

In the upcoming months, I will be working with Autodesk's ADA (Autodesk Design Academy) program and I will lobby Autodesk support for our organization.

If it is impossible for Autodesk to better award/recognize all the great animations and are unwilling to make a greater effort, then I feel that we must be responsible for recognizing eachother and creating our own awards, prizes and ceremonies that we can present at regionals and/or championships. The fact is that most animators are involved in the autodesk animation competition because they truly love animating and wish to become better at it, not just for some autodesk award, but for a reward in the likeness of being "noticed" and complimented upon. What difference would it make for a team to win the "FIRST Animators award for exceptional 3d animation" compared to "Autodesk Visualization Award" if both winners were called down, their animations shown and given nice trophies?

As far as online resources go, the FIRST animators yahoo group has pretty much died off in terms of activity. CD boards are good for resources, but not properly suited for the needs of animators to post, rate eachother's animations and create custom tutorials.

If your team is interested in assisting team 75 in establishing this community, and wish to be involved in shaping the future of this organization, please send an email to:

JP Ren - jpren@rcn.com
Greg Liebowitz - greg@itmediaco.com

Re: Animation Winners at Nats
 

I'm with you. I've done animation for 2 years and this year I tried to do something different. But, I saw a lot of great ANIMATIONS when I watched them on the Einstein field. However, there really wasn't much animation in the winning animation. The little there was I know wasn't terribly difficult to put together either since I've been an animator once......... :confused:
Even I was a little shocked. And I was wondering why there were only two winning animations this year because there used to be a ton!

commercial
 

I remember last year that the way they wanted the animation sent to them was in the format that it could be used like a commercial. Our mentor was constantly saying "sounds like they want a commercial"
Doesn't surprise me too much.

hmmm....
 

please do not bring up an overly debated fact from last year.
It is not the animation team's fault that Derek was the only one who had his own copy at home. We tried to not let him make the entire thing, but there was only so much I could do. Somehow he kind of usurped my authority :(.

Re: Re: Animation Winners at Nats
 

Autodesk just removed the honorable mentions, probably because they added all the regional awards. IMO Autodesk just balanced it out. We thought that perhaps regional animation signified a new way for them to respect and encourage animators, but it really was balanced by the fact that they eliminated all but 2 of the national awards. IMO we havent really gained anything at all this year. Sure, more teams get recognized, but regionals were so poorly put together most of them didnt even show the winner on the big screen. At least at nats last year everyone got to see the 5 animations that won the honorable mentions, rookie award, and grand prize.

Also, did anyone notice how at regionals they did awards in order of importance(most important last)? We were the second award to be announced, only ahead of the webite award(which got even less attention than animation this year, and probably wasnt big enough to be judged at the regional level IMO).

Thanks Chris Nowak -
I was a little curious about all of that. And your right about the Regional things, out of the two regionals I attended, I only saw 1 animation. You guys do deserve more emphasis.

Animation Woes
 

I think it is unfortunate that this year's "animation" award was a joke. No disrespect to team 967, but I wouldn't necessarily classify your video as an animation. I know that lots has been said about this subject, but I thought it was time for an adult's point of view.

This year's animation award started off with some new screwy developments. Being the Technical Excellence Honorable Mention award winner last year, we had high hopes. When we got the rules in our hands and saw that Autodesk had taken almost a month away to develop our animation. Little did we know, that wasn't the only thing they were going to mess with.

I think it is strange that they are giving less awards at Nationals now. I know that the regional awards adds more recognition to the teams, but is it really a better route? I guess, it could have been if Autodesk had supported it more. Our animation leader went to vote at our first regional (St. Louis) and he said that there was a little room with a tiny TV with the animations on auto-repeat. No one from Autodesk was present. Also, a team didn't even have to be at the regional to win the award. Team 74 (which I have never seen this animation) won several and Gunn Robotics also won a few. I don't really think that is fair. If you have to submit your chairman's award entry to ONLY 1 regional...the same should be for the animation. To top all this off, FIRST didn't even show the winning animations at most regionals.

I heard that someone confronted the man in charge of the animation judging and awards about a week before the first regional. They filled him in on the problems and loopholes in this year's animation rules, but he said that it was too late to change. Hopefully next year, the award will be more recognized and supervised. I'm pretty sure that no one from Autodesk reads these posts, so we need to make the extra effort to save this award. When FIRST has its annual forum, make sure that your team's representative has a list of complaints, comments, etc. to let Autodesk know what you think about their changes this year.

There is great power in numbers.

Re: Animation Woes
 

I think you hit the nail right on the head. The winning entry was an excellent production, but it really wasn't an animation. If Autodesk wants to give an award for the best "visualization", even if it has little animation in it, they should at least keep the Technical Excellence award to reward those teams who put a lot of time into designing a very technical, full 30 second animation, all in 3DS Max. I always thought Compelling Creativity was a good one too, so I say, bring back the Honorable Mentions!

Re: Animation Woes
 

at this point I kind of doubt animation can be submitted this way because of the fact that student judging is so inaccurate. I think the main thing autodesk wanted out of regional animation awards was to get rid of all of the really crappy ones. At this point there would be some regionals with only four or five animations at themif you did it the way you suggest, and this doesnt exactly promote animation, does it? I do agree that it is a poor system, they definitely need to improve, like make it so you cant win at more than 1(but then how would they do regionals at the same time as one another?) or something. I also kind of think its ridiculous that we won at 3 regionals, thats kind of too much, considering that we werent officially at great lakes.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=19296

Go there. That's all I can think of saying.

In my opinion, team 192's animation should've taken the cake... it was just beautiful with a great message which related to FIRST. But, not much we can do about that now :) However, Autodesk shouldn't be looking for an excellent commercial... that's not what the Animation competition is about.

regional awards
 

What is given to a team if they win a regional award? The reason I ask is, is it really balancing out if you give on national award that gets software and a lot of regional awards that just get like recognition? (This is posted before I know what the regional award is)

Re: regional awards
 

I heard at some regionals they didn't even show the animation. I also cannot recall anyone getting anything for winning.

Sensel...I thought I would never hear or see you again...

We animators have got to stick together because we're the only ones who even bother to care about the award. All of you who are here should join up. At the very least the students.
Strength in numbers.

some stuff
 

I'm from 967 and the points you all have made are valid. but..... for those that keep calling the award an animation award please understand that the award is Called the Autodesk Visualization Award, not the autodesk animation award. As for only Regional winners getting into nats,(like the chairmans award.)
the judging at the regionals was done by students, the chairmans award is done by the actual representatives of the award. Maybe next year but then they probably won't have student judging. In my own opinion I believe we won because the narration, camara angles, animation, and a good story line all contributed, not just a sweet animation or cool sounds. You need a little of everything.

I think what we are all finding out here is that this year's award was unorganized and unsupported by Autodesk.

I have do disagree with T967's post about the award. If you look at the first line of the award specifications in the rules it says animation

6.0

Purpose of the Award - Honor excellence in student animation

6.2

Award recognizeds 30 seconds of student animation...

These are just some of the instances in the rules that say "Animation." I know that you read further and found instances where it said other things could be used, but did you really compile you "video" in an Autodesk product? Does anyone?

This award became a joke this year. I know many people are dissatisfied and changes will come. Let's hope they are for the better, rather than the worse.

Re: regional awards
 

The winning regional team is given one of the FIRST regional winning trophy things.... as do all the teams that win quality awards, or things like that, it just says "Autodesk Award For Visualization Award" on the base.

I dunno, t967 is partially right. We used live video in our animation 2 years ago, and it fit in pretty well... but I do think the animation should outweigh the video. I guess we just have to find out what Autodesk's definition of the word "Animation" is.

Re: some stuff
 

First of all congrats to your animation, to people who are ripping on it, please stop what is done is done, how would you feel if you get the same criticism.

Here is my only beef with your statement:

If you go to the awards documents under where the Autodesk Award for Visualization is, read what the purpose of the award is:


Purpose of Award:
Honor excellence in student animation.

Also

6.2 Award Description
The Award recognizes 30 seconds of student animation that clearly and creatively illustrates
what FIRST means to your team...........

Now i believe that it says animation, not live video.

I believe that using a little live video to mix in with the animation is great, however stand alone video i believe is a no-no and i will be talking to Ted about this this upcoming Saturday.

Like i said that I do not mean to rip on you at all T967, i believe that your presentation was very good, however I believe that a lot of teams are not following the rule criteria or the spirit of what the award is supposed to be. I believe that a lot of teams incorporated in their animation what would have been on their chairman's award submission had they allowed video.

My 2/1/2 cents

- Tyler

hi,

I'm from team 114. One thing I want to say about the Autodesk is that the topic of the award and the rules are not consistent. The award says "visualization award", which means it's for both animation and movie. and the rules repeatedly say "animation". I'm surprise to know that 967 has won. I have heard that their project is mostly composed with movie clips. I still have to see their project to look at their quality. I think Autodesk has fooled us into thinking that this award is only for animations, because their rules repeatedly say "animation"

I will not critize 967's work, because I think taking movie clips that can present an excellent message about FIRST can be very tough. But of course I don't know how much effort they put into. The fact that they have won made me think of some positive ideas about Autodesk. I was thinking Autodesk picked them because they want us to understand that a clear message is extremely important. Fancy things will not make an animation better. For kids, it might be. For professional though, the message is the most important. Last year, we won the national champ. We were curious about our score, so we asked Autodesk to send it to us. They said that our animation has a great quality, but the message did not emphasize clearly. Same thing happen with this year's animation. We did not have a narrator to emphasize our theme clearly. The quality is great, but without emphasizing the theme clearly, the animation will not score high. One thing I am very unhappy with is the lack of time, and we can do way better if we have more time to work on it. Let's learn their strength and not bashing them. I'm sorry for team 967 for receiving these critizism about their way in presenting their work.

One thing I want to add is that, animation and movie are two different things. I hope next year, Autodesk can open a new category for movie clips and have a separate competition for animations. SO there will be more awards for teams. Also, we should have more than 1 Honorable mentions for teams that are great. 74, 75, 103, 114, 116 and 192 are certainly great, and I think all of us should receive some sort of award. Compare with last year, there's a lot of more great animations. To encourage students in working hard, Autodesk should issue more awards to teams.

give some comments,
Brian

It's totally not 967's fault.

This year is too messed up. FIRST should support autodesk. Inventor and AutoCAD help robot building, I think FIRST should support some of those awards. THen Autodesk can focus on movie competition and animation competition.

adding to animation competition, teams can only use movie clips as support.

Brian

Great idea, but..........

Why dont 5 quality awards or 5 woody flowers awards than?

Five Woodie Flowers awards would take away from the prestige of getting it. But they should have honorable mentions for some awards, like the AutoDesk Visualization Award.

isnt winning a regional considered an honorable mention???

you can only give out so many awards, even though trust me more teams deserve awards than what ever will eb handed out.

I said I wasnt comming back here because I was sick of all the bickering. But then I kept getting email notifications on this thread so i figured I'd check it out and see what you were all up to.

As I said before its wrong of anyone who bashes team 967 or any other team. But that also goes for team 967. Face it- if you read the rules its not too confusing. I spelled it out in the very begining of this thread. I see others have done it more recently. Just because team 967 won doesnt give you the right to insult our intelegence by trying to justify the results. So please stop. Any other team that bashes another - please stop. Its not what this whole thing is about. I've been trying to keep quiet untill I can see the animation again- yet autodesk hasnt posted it yet and team 967 has ignored my several offers (including a PM) to host it on one of my web servers. I am actious to be able to see it again and see what me and the other 10,000 people missed when they played it in Houston.

As I stated before- there are ways to incorporate the video and ways that dont look too good. I work in the Graphic Design/Video Production Industry and there are many many many people who are considered professionals that just cant design to save their life. Thats what keeps people like me in business. We help all thos others look good. So the fact that "Professionals" judged these animations doesnt mean all that much to me. I was told that most of them were Engineers (not video pros). One comment I told to autodesk- and on other threads here- if professionals are so iffy in their abilities how could we expect students to do justice for the judging. As I also mentioned before- For anyone that was in the same conference as 967- you must have given them enough votes to get to the championships- so dont all you guys point and complain about autodesk. Dont forget that they donate a ton of product and resources to the participating teams. DONT BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU! My father isnt perfect either- you dont see me attacking him!!! Well I guess I'm not either- but theres still time!, But I digress...

Just get working on your skills. This entire exercise is not to win an award- Though I've had my own sights on it too. Its about getting you interested and giving you the resources to aquire these skills to decide if this is somthing you want to do for the rest of your life. I started doing 3D (exclusivly) almost 9yrs ago now I have my own business and produce Videos, CDRoms, 2D & 3D Animations, Web Content and a ton of other stuff- This is only the beginning. Just keep at it.

BTW- Architectual "VISUALIZATIONS" are 3d Computer Renderings- They don't call drawings or paintinfs or videos- VISUALIZATIONS- so please don't be misguided by thinking this could be anything. And dont take that out of context- it says AUTODESK VISUALIZATION - that implies using Autodesk products and if that wasnt clear enough- they mention that too!

Please dont complain about the time. Its more time than I get for 99% of the projects I work on in the working world. I've turned bigger projects around in 5-6 days. You had 6 weeks. Plus a month with the software (if you were a new team) and more if you had 3DS in the past.

Good luck to all in the off season and lets get on with it!

Trying really hard
 

Our team is trying to get the animation up on our website. time, memory, those kinds of things. Also an Autodesk rep told us that the video would be up on the autodesk website sometime. Not sure when. If you are really really interrested I can try to send you the file via e-mail but that could take a while since the file is kinda big. send a PM and your e-mail address and I'll try. The low res is about 6.5 MB. use windows media player.

Like I have said in here to, what's done is done, lets look to the future and appreciate what we have, and try to build on what we have learned.

If you want something changed for next year, post it in the proper thread that is titled "what do you want to change next year" I will show it to Ted and he'll do what he can, as I am sure other people like stevek is as an adult and a person who has many more contacts that what we do as students.

Appreciate what you do have, learn from the mistakes in the past, and use your imagination to help you accomplish the future.

Sorry for pissing you off, but I want say one more thing.

I'm not trying to bash 967 or morning that this year is not fair. In fact I'm trying to say that 967 has their strength and we should all learn from them. I'm sorry if I confuse you too much. I feel sorry for 967 to have people bashing them. I also respect them as winner of this year. But I'm just mad because Autodesk took away the prizes that others deserve. (It is very good to point out that the competition is not for winning)

By the way, I'm just a student and I don't have too much experience in using the program. I certainly feel lack of time because I'm not a professional animator. I enjoy working on the project and I'm pleased to have Autodesk giving us the chance.

After all, the season is over. It's good know how to improve. THat's why I post a thread for people to give comments on our animation.

I'm going to stop talking now, to prevent me from going off topic.

bye
Brian

Re: Re: Animation Woes
 

ditto