Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

okay listen...

"All animations winning at the regional level will advance to the next phase of judging."

To me this ALSO means: all animations NOT winning at the regional level will NOT advance to the next phase of judging

Perhaps this is an extrapolation i am not allowed to make. It only seems like common sense to me.

Also: Rookie teams who won at the regional level should take precedence over any other rookie team by default. IF a non-rookie animation was to be chosen for the grand prize than the rookie award must go to any rookie team that one at a regional, or if that didn't happen, then the rookie award would be given to ANY rookie team (which of course would involve bringing all of the rookie animations into contention for the award).
To put it more simply: Because a non-rookie animation was chosen for the grand prize winner this year, then the only ones who should have been considered for the rookie award are teams 1188, 1478, and 1181 -- plain and simple.
Once again: this is, to me, common sense

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

I don't know if you're a little bitter or something, but I guess that's just the way FIRST interperets their own rules. I can see your point on how they are a little sketchy, so maybe it would be advantageous to post on the FIRST forums or e-mail FIRST / Autodesk to clarify this for next year.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

I don't understand the problem. Are you perhaps making the mistake of thinking that the "Rising Star" award is a "phase" of judging? It isn't. It is totally separate from the regular Autodesk Visualization Award (with the provision that a rookie receiving the championship means there will be no Rising Star award given).

Think it through. What happens to all those rookies who didn't win a regional because there was a non-rookie animation judged to be better at that regional? Your "common sense" interpretation would deny them the opportunity to compete against the other rookies, even though there's no reason to think they are inferior to them.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

look man, it doesn't matter if they were supposed to be in the competition or not. I think the cg parts of your animation were excellent, but in the end it was a glorified video with a couple seconds of CG. The presense of the winning team makes no difference whatsoever on the fate of your "animation"

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

This is a good point.
It's still not very clear at all. I think a lot of people were confused.

Sure I'm bitter haha. The winning rookie animation had no message at all. I thought that was the point.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

time to clear this up

in order to win the GRAND PRIZE your animation had to win at the regional level. If you were a rookie team, then your animation could ALSO be considered for the GRAND PRIZE and RISING STAR.

Under the rules that autodesk has had for the past 4 years when I was involved, a rookie animation is the team's first animation. Even if they are not a rookie team (like 639). Rising star is completely different and has its own set of guidlines. Most rookie animations cannot win at the regional level, and the purpose of the rising to star is to select the best rookie animation. Autodesk justs assumes that rookie animations won't win (because its their first year) and has this award to give to rookie teams. If you won at a regional, congrats, but don't be bitter for others success. You'll learn in time that autodesk doesnt always do the right thing that we would expect, but they have done it this way the entire time I was involved in FIRST.

Hope that brings closure.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

I'm sorry you didnt see a message in our animation, it wasn't a particularly strong one, but it was there. The main idea was that creating a robot in FIRST involves the use of right and left brain thinking. The animation starts off with the character walking towards the robotics lab, with the camera in "realisitic" mode. The camera then goes into the right side of his head, and switches to a cartoon type view, which represents how the world is seen by the right brain only. Then the camera goes into the left side of his head, at which point the world transforms into wireframe. This represents the world with left brain thinking only. As he opens the door to the lab, the camera goes back to realistic (how the world looks normally, using both sides of the brain). Then the robot scene in the lab is supposed to represent creation itself, which requires the fusion of right and left brain thinking, or as our title states, "fusion of creativity and ingenuity". When we put the final animation together we didn't realize we could've written a full statement, which would've made the message more clear.

While the message is a large part of the judging process, obviously animation itself is too, which your entry seemed to lack. The judging for the Rising Star award is done by professionals and the regionals are judged by student animators, which is why it shouldn't be a huge surprise that you could win one award and not the other. Perhaps the professionals were able to see our message more clearly than the student animators did.

We don't exactly have any place to host our animation...check your pms, I'll try to find a way to get it to you :)

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Here:

TEAM 1489 ANIMATION:
http://web.mit.edu/~levpopov/Public/R-1489_AVA2004.mov

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

grrrrrrrr : ]

okay i didn't mean for us to start going on about why yours or mine was better in this thread

you can pm me if you wanna do that.
we can rumble if you so desire ;]
just prepare to lose

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Hey man, i think your animation is great. Don't get me wrong, you're fantastic modeller/animator. I just think that your final product would have greatly benefited from containing less video. The addition of the video totally ruined the animation for me. I think if you had gone strictly CG, you could have easily won the competition.

Just don't interpret this as $@#$@#$@#-kissing.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Sorry if I came off that way, I wasn't trying to say that ours was better. Both animations have their strengths and weaknesses, and that's all I was trying to point out.

Lev - Thx for hosting the file :)

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

hold on guys, your getting too worked up over this. The rookie award will obviously go to a rookie team who hasn't sent an animation before. The judging is ONLY done on rookie teams for this award, thus, a team like mine, who has submitted many animations before, wouldn't be eligible for this award. The team that won the award won because they were the best of the rookies. It has nothing to do with making it past regionals. Btw, congrats to 955 on the win ;)

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

well i guess it depends on how you interpret the competition.
Is the CG more important or the message?
I felt i needed the video to send my message.
Also, i could never have finished an entire CG segment. I probably would have spent months on it

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

That's really a good question... If you look at last year's winner, it was almost entirely video, and if you look at this year's animation it's entirely CG. So, I guess it's really all about the message :]

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Ted Boardman and I had a long discussion about this last year when I had lunch with him in Green Bay. He told me that since FIRST is ment to symbolize real life, he feels that the animations aspect is to as well. Many movies now and days use digital animation mixed in with real video, some are just purely animated. However most people watch a movie for the message not the animation (unless you're geeks like us).