[stevek]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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