Re: Fewer Animations?
 

I personally think the animation competition needs major league retooling to make it actually legitimate and useful instead of the sideshow afterthought that it is.
It should be made into a video design competition that features animation to create 2 minute team previews that can be shown during the eventual downtime that occur at the events due to the field breaking down.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

Not a bad idea actually, that way anyone who can figure out a camera and Windows Movie Maker would at least be able to submit something, maybe setup a point system for it where you get more points for having an animation in it, but it wouldn't require you to have one in order to submit one. :rolleyes:

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

WHOA!!! that hurts. You might as well stabbed me in the chest with a monkey wrench. When I joined robotics, I thought I was going to be a mechanical engineer. FIRST taught me I HATE engineering, but then I found animation. And fell deeply in love with it. I now think of nothing other than animation and loving every bit of it. Which is far better than me being in my sophomore year of college just now finding out I hate engineering and not know what to do.

It hurts when people say that to teammates. Some of my teamates wanted me off the team because I wasn't helping with the robot when I did animation for the first year. Animation is HARD. Let die hard animation lovers be. Don't force them to do something they don't like.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

True, however, if you don't have a finished robot to compete with then an animation isn't really going to do you much good will it? Granted if you have enough people on the team to get the robot done, so be it, but it is a reality for some teams that there are sometimes just not enough people to have some off working on side projects like animation and such. :(

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

I have no intentions of dragging animators away from 3ds max. The one guy who did anything on the animation team was more intent on the robot getting done, I was just keeping him on task. We lost our true animator last year to JMU.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

However in 2007, our animation did allow our team to be a part of the Championship even though our robot could not.

FIRST is about exposing young high school students to Science and Technology. By participating in the FIRST program under the guidance of mentors, students are exposed to options of what they want to do later in life that they may otherwise not know about until the middle of college. There is much more than just engineering (even though that's what FIRST focuses on).

The robot is just a vehicle for this experience. It doesn't have to be particularly successful for students to have the "FIRST" experience. The kitbot, which provides a good deal of functionality, can be put together in a matter of hours. Teams are missing out if they only focus on just having a complete robot on ship day and neglect other aspects of FIRST.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

pete do you even know what a monkey wrench is?:D god i love bugging you.

i really wish i could write well enough to tell the story of the epic war between pete and myself, one full of sarcasm and brotherly love. lol

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

There's no harm in trying.

Get some team members to help you proof, edit. It sounds like a good story.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

Hint: it has nothing to do with tinfoil and monkies ;). Although, looking back to our rookie year, I'm curious what would have happened if we followed Pete's suggestion of training a monkey, encasing it with tinfoil, and passing it off as a robot. Hey, with the right monkey, maybe we would have done better in Atlanta :p.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

I'm guessing something more like this would happen.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

Hit the nail on the head.

It'd be interesting to see where most of the animation students are at today from when the animation program started.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

Oh god, butterfly effect. *starts looking around all paranoid*

I do like the idea of the animation aspect becoming more of an open ended thing, like using video and 3d animation together, or exclusively.

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

i have to say if it weren't for animation team i wouldn't be going into the major i am. there's also a lot of people who's future has been altered by the animation team. oh and half the fun is trying to figure out how to do an animation with the topic given, if they took that away nobody would do it cuz there would be no challenge.

that's my defense of the animation team but as why so few are in i think they just haven't processed them yet.:)

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

On our team, the animation team is respected...all 2 of us...

I helped start our FRC team in 2005 when I was a freshman wanting to be a software person. Animation got to me, and I haven't looked back since. Because of the animation competition, I've been accepted into my school of choice to go into 3d animation with a decent scholarship :)

I just think most people join a robotics team wanting to build a robot and don't even think twice about animation. A lot of people also don't respect how hard it is to create an animation. After all, animation isn't brain surgery. Brain surgery is easy...

So...in conclusion...I guess this post had no worth whatsoever :P

I do hope the animation program grows though :D.

-Chris

Re: Fewer Animations?
 

That is by far the most creepiest thing I have ever seen. TOTALY AWESOME!

Ha you know my robot idea is awesome. That's why I suggest it ever year.

To save Aren from writing a story, I think I can sum it up pretty good in this drawing. Except there would be more llamas in this picture.




Oh and I enjoy the animation competition so much, I will be flying down to atlanta just the hang out in the autodesk booth again. So catch me there and you can ask me any question on animation. I think between me and the other guy. We got pretty much all aspects of animation covered.