Blender in FIRST Animations?

[petdin]

I first got into Blender when I saw Big Buck Bunny. I got interested and started trying it out. I had a computer science and some 3d imaging background so it was not a totally different world for me.

I cannot remember if it was from Blender itself or from some other site, but they provided a very good set of video tutorials to get you to learn the basics. It was basically going through the whole interface with a voice over of it.

[Luckryan]

With the rules that the award has right now, I think that Blender is a good program to learn some of the basic concepts and then use the Autodesk software to do the final copy on. It is a lot of work I guess but if you alreally started Blender then I would keep with it for a little while.

[Kevin Thorp]

If you're comfortable with Blender or other 3d program, then 3ds Max will seem alien & frustrating, at first. But if you keep at it you'll start to like Max, and the interface will become more natural to use.

A few years ago I had a student that was pretty good with Inventor. He spent the first couple weeks complaining about how stupid 3ds Max was. As time went by he complained less and less, and eventually helped us win a regional animation award. The funny part was next year I heard him trying to tell a freshman animator to be patient.

Autodesk is hosting the competition so they of course require you to use their products. I think it's great they're donating 1-year licenses of very expensive professional software to all FRC teams.

As a bonus, if you go to a digital arts college or get a job in the multimedia industry, they'll probably be using 3ds Max or Maya.