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#37
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I was also at the Chesapeake Regional and agree with Lev that the conditions of the animation competition were terrible.
First of all, I want to repeat a couple of the things that I found demeaning about the animation competition: - About 90% (according to my extremely rough calculations) of the animations will never be judged by or even reach the eyes of professionals or the FIRST crowd in general. My team's animation will probably never be viewed out of my school again (aside from by the occasional internet downloader) after the Philadelphia Regional unless it passes through the extremely subjective judging system. That means that my animation team and I will have done days and days of work for maybe 20 people at most outside my team to see it, unless we're lucky enough to make it to the nationals. Even at the nationals, I doubt that FIRST will publicly spend any more than 5-10 minutes on animation. - The judging system is really awful. They could have at least given the student judges a rubric or something or divided the scoring into more categories. "Earning" a certain number out of twenty or forty can never tell you how good your animation was or where you need to improve. These are only 2 of the degrading things about the animation competition, and there were obviously several more discussed earlier in the thread. Secondly, I have come to believe that FIRST and most of its competitors see the animation competition as a waste of time and animation in general as a worthless skill to be pursued only by artsy-fartsy people who don't like science and math. This is totally wrong. Many of the principles of physics, math, programming, and design, the things that seem to be considered most important by FIRST, are embodied in the animation process. The principal animators of my team are among (if not) the most intelligent and knowledgeable student members on the team in each of these fields. 1) Physics - Take the curve editor for example. When using this tool to animate, one must consider distance vs. time, observe velocity as the slope of the line, and make the acceleration between starting and stopping physically correct. Another example is the use of pivot, or center of mass. In order to realistically portray and object in motion, one must consider its center of rotation. We personally considered physics (including torque, dynamics, friction, centripetal/fugal force, center of mass/gravity [pivot], etc.) throughout our animation. 2) Modeling objects and buildings in animation is a lot like designing a robot in CAD: one must consider (to a slightly more limited extent) scale, structural accuracy, and functionality in motion. A lot of the skills used in modeling carry over into CAD, not to say that animation in itself is not a useful skill in the real world. 3) Programming is usually not directly used at least in the most basic and obvious forms of animation, but the two processes are very similar. In 3dsm, one must constantly consider various functions and commands that affect multiple variables which can represent object orientation, position, scale, etc. As for animation being harder or easier than designing, building, and programming a robot, I think that each can be more difficult in certain respects. 1) In the design aspect, animation can be equally difficult depending on the amount of detail that one is using in modeling and physical properties. 2) Building a robot is comparable to rendering an animation. The computer makes rendering a whole lot easier, whereas building a robot requires extensive physical effort and therefore more time. 3) According to my friend Mike (mikeXstudios), another member of the animation team who is highly experienced in both programming and animation, animation is significantly more difficult. In animation there are tons of modifiers, sections within the modifiers, and then details past that which can lead to larger windows of details, not to mention lists and lists of creation tools and details for hierarchy. Compared to 3dsm, PBASIC stamp has relatively few commands that the user must be familiar with to achieve functionality. Taking into account the way in which these three aspects of designing a robot are partitioned among many people and the way that animation is assigned to only a few, it is easy to see that animation can be equally or more difficult. On my animation team (and probably the majority of others across the country) there was really no professional help available and the animators had to work alone with an occasional reminder to stay on task, whereas the students who helped construct and program the robot functioned on the most part under the guidance of engineers and experienced teachers. Considering all of these aspects of animation, I think that it should be taken much more seriously by FIRST. It uses processes similar to those of designing a robot and requires extensive knowledge in physics, math, design, and aesthetics. In an organization that is trying to promote brainpower over athletic and physical ability, it seems that a new division has come about: the production of the robot and the production of the animation. Sadly, FIRST has chosen to support the more physical side of the competition while basically ignoring the "virtual" (so to speak), even though both require equal amounts of effort and skill. FIRST's hypocritical attitude towards animation really needs to change. Last edited by Brandon Martus : 20-03-2003 at 11:54. |
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