Animation Winners at Nats

[Austin]

Originally posted by xavior06
we [animators] put in more hours of work than the students who built the robot...

Maybe on your team; not so on many others.

[RachelOfMars]

Originally posted by stevek
I already mentioned this but I will be concise- It says you can use live video. But it also say in the previous paragraphs that it must by 30Sec of Animation. There is only one way to have both rules work together and that is to mix live action with animation. That means on the screen at the same time. Otherwise you would never full fill the previous requirements.

You may want to check out last year's submission from team 166 -- they won an Honorable Mention, and they used video in it (a clip of Ralph Bayer, the inventor of Pong). That animation can be downloaded from: http://www.baesystemsfirst.org/team1...mall_movie.avi

According to Derek (the kid who made virtually () all of that animation), they did NOT use video and animation simultaneously for that clip... on the other hand, the clip clearly does not overpower the animation.

[Cumulonimbus57]

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.

[xavior06]

well i meant to say that as in that we [animators] deserved recognition of our hard work as much those who build the robot.

[tinsLee123]

I understand how you feel about our visiualization. This was our first year doing this. Only me and another kid knew anything at all about animating with 3ds max and we were both busy with other aspects of our team. By the way, we did spend a lot of time modeling the robot and figuring out how to animate falling blocks with reactor. Haha..

So the voice...
that was me j/k
it was actually a jeep guy we had to do our voice paid for by rockwell collins our sponsor

WE OWE HIM ALOT

aight... fa sho
anyway i heard our animation should be posted on discreet and eventually on our website at www.lmrobotics.com

more later
gota run

[tinsLee123]

we weren't expecting to win this because we didn't really get a chance to see previous years entries until after we were finished, and we realized that ours was maybe what wasn't expected. it definitely suprised us

I think we probs got high marks for mixing different types of media into a good final product. We used many programs to do this:

Autodesk 3ds max for the model of the robot and the final scene where bins were knocked over - Peter Wong and Eric Lee (me)
Adobe After Effects for the text - Matt Craig
Adobe Premiere for transitions, putting everything together - Matt Craig and Eric Lee
Virtualdub (free product!) for converting some clips - Eric Lee
Adobe Illustrator for logos, title screen, and end screen - Peter Wong
Adobe Photoshop for logos, title screen, and end screen - Peter Wong
Tmpgenc for mpeg conversion - Eric Lee

For people that say video is easy...it's not either... we took hours of video before we found good quick clips

We did sort of run out of time, and barely got this sent in. Next year Matt and I return so we both hope to dive deep... deep...deep (like blackstreet - deep.mp3) into 3ds max over the summer, so at least half of our visualization can be animated. We like the use of both video and 3ds max.

You have to understand the situation that we didn't have a computer capable of running 3ds max until december when i (and some others) assembled a computer (recommendation: dual athlon mps). We had very little time to learn the program. We basically only had my computer (that i built also) and our school computer that were capable of running the program. If you wonder why we weren't rookie team winner, it's because i forgot to check mark the box on the application.

I scored the visualizations at st. louis so i saw many of the entries, and i admit i thoroughly enjoyed them. Team 1182, excellent job! They actually won our regional, and i did pick them. Great work, great message, great animation!

thats my take

[Chris Nowak]

yeah, I was thoroughly impressed with 1182's animation and I can see why it beat us at St. Louis and Canada. Even more impressive was the fact that it was a rookie animation. Great job!

[xavior06]

dont get me wrong guys, u guys had an excelent entree for the award and were well deserving. by the way that voice shook me out of my seat. transitions were awesome and the whole concept was cool. (especially since you didnt get to check out previous winners!)


but, i think many other teams had great submissions (i cant really call them purely animations anymore) as well, and with the amount of time allocated to autodesk awards, the lack of honorable mentions, and how when i looked around i was the only one standing and clapping to all the winners, i was disapointed with how FIRST was treating all of the people who worked extremely hard.

I hope next year they get their act together and show more respect.

excelent job again guys, any company would have paid big bucks for a commercial like that! (haha, first has all the rights to it now tho{for free too} )

[MattK]

is there a version of the winnin animation online?

[stevek]

Personally I thought the "Crouching Tiger" Animation was one of the best last year- I didnt agree with those results either. I've been on lots of competition teams in my past, I follow the rules as best I can to the letter of the law and I always take myself out of the mix when considering who should win. This way I can be as unbias as possible. I was upset that the above mentioned animation didnt win let alone get an honorable mention next to the ones that did win and get HM's. If you want to know why- take the next 6-months and try to do it yourself.

It pisses me off when the Judges who SHOULD know the rules, dont follow them. (and dont tell me that they are volunteers- because so am I) Because there are plenty of teams that do follow the rules and there are plenty of them that I felt were better picks. If you are looking for surprise and differences- do so within the rules. "30 Sec of Animation using 3DS Max" means 30Sec of animation using 3DS MAX. They dont say, if you happen to do animation for somepart of your 30sec spot- why dont you try this free $3500 software program that we throw in the kit for you. I am a professional animator and graphic designer. I know what it means to "combine" live and CG in a scene. Cutting from one to another is not combining. If You were watch Starwars Ep.II and you see a closeup shot of Anakin Skywalker that cuts to the other side of the universe to show Yoda, do you think- wow that's a great combination of Live Action and CG? I dont think so. But when JaJa and OB1 interact and react in the same scene you think- wow that was awesome. Or in Ep-I the pod races were all done with a combination of CG, Live, and I think Miniatures as well. Thats Combining CG and Live.

All they had to do for this animation (ant the Pong one last year)is place the video in a CG environment and everything would be OK.

I've done promo's for CMT channel that involved a huge CG projection Screen that played live video while CG lights and text and smoke all were layered on top. Ive alos made TV and Computer screens within a CG environment that played video in it. This is "Combining" Ive also done training videos where the store backgrounds were all CG or a city scape that contained the actors. Then there was a Stephen King Commercial that had a CG Skeleton and CG cemetary and the stormy sky and Foreground mail boxes (that recieve the latest SK book through the mail) were all Live footage.

Thats all I'm gunna say on the subject. If you disagree with me- Read the rules first so you can tell me where I'm wrong, then send me a private message because I'm not comming back here. All it does is make the winners feel bad or get them pissed at us and neither one is good or necessary. Just move on and get ready for next year. I am by no means implying that they should reconsider their selection and take back any trophy. This is just not a good path to go down.

[ahecht]

I have to say that the winning animation was very well put together, presented a clear message, and came out very professional. However, I would've preferred to see a team like 21 win, who used what John Lassiter calls "common sense animation." Basically, what that means is that they presented a clear and interesting story, didn't rely on swooping camera angles and other gimmicks, and rendered something that could look believable given the technological contrainsts (this is why Lassiter's Pixar, which made such movies as Toy Story, has been so successful). There animation with marionetts was very cute.

I think that there should be an award for the type of submission that we saw win, perhaps some kind of "promotional media" award. This is basically what the Chairman's awards had turned into in the past few years, and I know that many teams were sorry to see that aspect of it go. However, I don't think that the Autodesk Visualization Award is the place for it (or if it is, there should be a seperate Autodesk Animation Award).

Also, I was very dissapointed with the way that the Autodesk rep announced the awards. It was very anti-climatic. There was no sense of suspense or drama, and by announcing the team number first, and then describing the animation and the team, all of his comments were drowned out by cheers.

[Soukup]

Originally posted by ahecht


Also, I was very dissapointed with the way that the Autodesk rep announced the awards. It was very anti-climatic. There was no sense of suspense or drama, and by announcing the team number first, and then describing the animation and the team, all of his comments were drowned out by cheers.

actually they showed both the winning inventor and visualization awards somewhere around match 110 (when we were out on the field) On einstein's screens. WE couldn't figure out why it won at all then, and after talking to ted, he didn't have a good explanation either. So, ohh well, autodesk screwed up big this year, maybe we can hope for more respect next year.

[ComBBAT_Albrot]

Originally posted by TEAM_74
actually they showed both the winning inventor and visualization awards somewhere around match 110 (when we were out on the field) On einstein's screens. WE couldn't figure out why it won at all then, and after talking to ted, he didn't have a good explanation either. So, ohh well, autodesk screwed up big this year, maybe we can hope for more respect next year.

My experience:
1999 - Maybe we'll get more respect next year.
2000 - Maybe we'll get more respect next year.
2001 - Maybe we'll get more respect next year.
2002 - Wow, they added honorable mentions. Still, we'd really like some recognition OUTSIDE of the 10 minutes in the awards ceremony.
2003 - Regional animation awards! Wow!.... Oh, these are a tremendous screw-up, and it seems like we're getting even MORE ignored now. Fantastic.

Hoping for the best hasn't done much. Constant lobbying has done little. The only thing we can really do is hope to get one of our own on the inside of FIRST and make some changes. I would LOVE to be that person, but I'm only a college freshman :-/

Also, ahecht, thank you very much for your kind comments. I'll pass them on to the rest of the animation team. However, being that we didn't even make the top 5 at any of our regionals, it's really surprising to see how many people wanted ours to win.

[TheFork]

Basically Autodesk is on crack.
End of story.

[Mayberry]

No, it's not "end of story"; rather, it should be the beginning. Yes, Autodesk has made a lot of our lives unnecessarily difficult, but don't you think a company of their capacitance would have the ability to make some major changes? I know that general experience proves us wrong, but we can only slam our heads against the wall so many times until something happens (either change or a near-fatal aneurism). I don't think Autodesk-bashing is going to help; we ought to identify what the precise problems are, separate those we can improve from those out of our hands, and move from there.

---
"Why can't you animate yourself a reality check?" ---an ever-so-supportive team member