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
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.
