FINAL WINNERS
 

1489 for the rookie award

955 For the Grand Prize Winner

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Directly from the rules:

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


To my knowledge, team 1489 did not win at the regional level. It isn't on any of the lists. How did it get judged on the national level? :confused:

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Were there rookies that won at a regional? If no then by your logic no rookie could win the rookie award. Which is meant to honor the highest placing rookie.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

I am the animator from team R-1481 and YES we most certainly did win the Great Lakes Regional, sir.

The rules state that if a rookie were to win the grand prize than there would be no rookie award winner.

I could understand them choosing a rookie out of everybody if one hadn't won a regional, but that wasn't the case.
If only one rookie team had won a regional this year than they would get the rookie award by default.
This year there were three rookies that won at the regional level - 1481, 1188, and 1478. This means that ONLY out of these three teams could a rookie winner be chosen.
This obviously isn't what happened.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Is either of the animations posted somewhere?
I would really like to see them

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Well autodesk is supposed to host both videos on their website (autodesk.com/first) but they still have last years stuff up last time i checked.

Is ANYBODY going to maybe side with me in that it looks like the rules weren't followed?

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

I would not set my hopes too high for autodesk website... in past years it took months for the animations to appear.
Maybe someone from teams 955 and 1489 can post a link? If webspace is a problem, i can help.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Sorry, I have not followed the winners from regionals and I had no clue I a rookie animation won any where. Congratulations on both of you victories and good luck in the future.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Settle down their buddy, and let me explain:

First off congrats to the teams for winning, they were great animations, and clearly displayed the spirit of FIRST. Almost makes me want to go back to animations again.

The "Rookie Award" is a completely differant thing than the Grand Prize winner.

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

Very true, your animation did get judged for both the "Rookie" Award and the Grand Prize Winner (because you won at a regional).

Please let's all take a deep breath and relax before we get too OC (out of control) here.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Congrats to the winners, the Grand Prize animation had a great message and I really enjoyed it. :]

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

From The Awards rules:
That doesn't say that the rookie teams qualifying for the Rising Star award has to have won at the regional level - it just says that it must be the first year that the team has submitted an animation to be judged. Our team is in its 4th year but it is our rookie year as animators. Technically, even though we didn't win the animation award in Canada, we would still be eligible for the rising star award at Championships.

Or am I getting this all wrong?

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Thats exactly right Yan, thanks for getting the official clarification on it.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

No i do not think you are correct, I looked at that also.

It simply says the rookie DESIGNATION is given to teams that have only submitted an animation for the first time.

A team still must win at the regional level for it to be considered in nationals, as the section before the one you quoted states.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Hello.
We will have the animation up on our website by the end of the week, hopefully sooner. I will post a link when we get it up.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Based on that section, there is NO prerequisite required for a ROOKIE-designated team to be judged at championships for the Rising Star award.

Read:

Ok, the above is clear enough.
Ok, so rookies are teams that haven't yet submitted an animation yet - I already said this.
Ok, so the above said that if a rookie passes the prescreen process, they can be judged at the regional level. Also important is that teams who have submitted before but have been disqualified (was not judged) are NOT rookies.
And that says a Rookie-designated team that wins the Championship Award results in no Rising Star award.

I just went through the section you and I referred to quite clearly. The section does not state the qualifications of a Rookie-designated team in regards to being judged at championships for the Rising Star award. But more importantly, it does not state in the above quoted sections that a Rookie-designated team MUST have won at the regional level.

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).

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Yeah, video is great if used in context. It all comes down to what is the most effective way to get your message across.

congrats to the this year's animation winners :)

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

I just watched the 1489 animation and looks great. The on question I have is were the balls just yellow spheres or did you apply a texture?

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

They were textured, but compression made them look pretty bad :o

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

well then i guess turning on the nice renderer means turning on teh win.

V-ray?

I thought i'd be a little more classy than that.. I guess it nipped me in the butt

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Yes, I really liked how vray modeled our character and settings, generated all our materials, UV mapped everything, rigged the model, placed the lights, wrote the music, animated the scene, made HDRI maps and even did the video editing for us!

/sarcasm off...

Mental ray is just as capable as any renderer - theres a reason its bundled with 3dsmax. Everyone had access to it. However, in the end, the renderer is only as good as the artist. From what I've seen, several teams had some VERY impressive results with just the scanline renderer :). Another team had great results with Brazil at our regional - but that did not get them the award...

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

SO true. You guys earned what you got, regardless of what anyone thinks. Your animation was VERY impressive, and would stand a chance against many veteran team's animations. You should be very proud of yourself, and I can't wait to see what you guys will produce next year. :]

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

i didn't have mental ray:[

scanline for me
You ever want to go head to head in a real competition you let me know

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Those be fightin' words :] Sounds like a challenge, and I think something needs to be brought back to life since it's off season again - I remember last year during off season, someone would post a picture and animators would model it in Max and show off their work. Now w/ the reputation system maybe a few points could be given to the one who has the best work :] Just an idea.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Ungrateful kid, you know what I was running when I did animations????

3d Studio max R3.1 with a 16 mb graphics card, 128 mb ram, and a 1.0 p3. Not to mention additional lag because of the schools network.

Learn to be grateful for what you have, and I believe that even if there was no bad intent in your challange, that you should PM this to a person, or just nto say it at all. There are hundreds of people that are better than you. Which is a good thing because this means that you can only keep advancing through the ranks of knowledge with 3DS max.

May I suggest that we just drop this entire thing and let it rest? Worry about your own animation, the only reason you should worry about somebody else's is if you are willing to help them in a constructive manner.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

those ARE fighting words... lol :) :D

anyways... my friend chris did the uploading of the pics and such when we wer back on 74. I helped him out, I think we did 3 before it kind of fizzed out. Anyway, I have some pics that we were going to use and a large selectoin of areas... If we are interested I will turn this thing loose again. But we need at least 10 people. And if anyone wants a 1-1 challenge.... bring it (1 year of animation at the college level will make FIRST animations seem like finger painting :) j/k) anyways, if anyone is interested in the modeling from pic challange leave a reply and I can set up a thread or something and explain the rules.... believe me though (we did this on 3dcafe.com) if u want to learn how to become a better modeler/materialer youll learn this way. Imagine if 10-20 people r all modeling the same thing, then youll be able to compare your techniques to veryone elses. This = very good learning. Let me know if your interested....

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

my computer and max came out of my own pocket. I have no reason to be grateful for these things because they weren't given to me.

A public challenge fosters comradery and is an exhibit of sportsmanship and a competitive spirit if i do say so myself

and yes, you may suggest

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Why did you pay for Max when your team got a free copy of it with the kit at the beginning of the season?

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

The team copy is licensed for one computer. I doubt most teams would give their copy/license to a single student. On my team, it's installed on the main animation computer.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

I bought max a long time ago because it was something i was interested in.. I didn't even know that FIRST existed back then

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Anyone get their scores from Autodesk.

Looks to me like they didnt watch our animation, based on a comment they made!

____ FROM Autodesk____

Content 24
Creativity 26.5
Technical Execution 25
Comment: Very good facial materials, other materials need work . Story a little fragmented which clouds the message. Music could be more in background.

____ End if info _____

I'm used to todays MTV style Video Editing. I thought we showed nice cutting and told the story! Any thoughts from y'all. They sayed our textures need work, are they insane! What video did they watch, the only major problem I felt was the Lip Sync and maybe the texture on the pants on the guy in the in the car. Everthing else was awesome (I think I can say that since I was only the mentor not the one doing the work. All I did is crack the whip and point them in the right direction) I'd like to here what you guys think if you havent seen it go here to team 230's website

ALSO Post some of your scores too!
Thanks

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

Im goin to make a new thread, that way this one doesnt get too cluttered. Post them there, not here.

Re: FINAL WINNERS
 

The thing about having to win a regional doesn't apply to rookies because:
1) What if one rookie (Team X) applied to a regional with a bunch of experienced non-rookies with great animations

2)Team Y applied to a regional with crappy animations and had an okay animation but not better than Team X

Team Y should move on but Team X shouldn't? I don't think so.... thats why rookie is or should be judged seperately IMHO