Help with animation please

[Waldo1641]

Hello First people,
I am the CAD leader of my rookie team (1641). Our school is in Mojave, California and I am 14 years old. The leader of our team (my brother) has appointed the task of making the video for the animation clip contest to me. As we are a rookie team and I know little about CAD, (I am learning however) animation is much much harder. Basically I need the help from anyone who will give it to me. Exaples: 1.What program to use, 2.How to use it or where I can find out how to use it, 3. creative ideas, 4. helpful suggestions, ect.

Thank you!

[jdiwnab]

Originally Posted by Waldo1641

Hello First people,
1.What program to use, 2.How to use it or where I can find out how to use it, 3. creative ideas, 4. helpful suggestions, ect.

Thank you!

1) the kit comes with 3d Studio Max. It is good, as long as you have a good enough of a computer.
2) There is too much to tell you about it in a fourm like this. However, 3DS max has very good tutorials that you should try out. They would be under the Help menu, I think, unless it's changed from 3DS max 5.
3) You have to be the creative one. Nearly every team is making a video. the kit should have come with a DVD of last year's videos. You can get some ideas from that
4) Get a team together. Learn Max with them. Try to work together to get a storyboard together and how you would go about making it

Becuase each team gets 1 copy of 3DS max, I sugest downloading Gmax or using VIS that came in the kit for the basic modeling. Gmax is free and both are very close to 3DS max. I'm not very fimiliar with VIS, but the screenshots look like Max. If you understand Max or the others, you will get them all.

Good Luck!

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Waldo1641

Hello First people,
I am the CAD leader of my rookie team (1641). Our school is in Mojave, California and I am 14 years old. The leader of our team (my brother) has appointed the task of making the video for the animation clip contest to me. As we are a rookie team and I know little about CAD, (I am learning however) animation is much much harder. Basically I need the help from anyone who will give it to me. Exaples: 1.What program to use, 2.How to use it or where I can find out how to use it, 3. creative ideas, 4. helpful suggestions, ect.

Thank you!

I hate to break it to you but I'm afraid you are starting awfully late to be able to complete an animation considering your level of experience with the program. I would recommend practicing for next year instead.

[UsmanB]

koko is right, BUT, you still can do it as long as you keep your modeling simple. i mean you'll have to make something of boxes and other prisms and polygons that u can use with max b/c it'll take you for ever modeling things and then camera and lighting and all that other crap. i suggest recording alot of video with a digital camera, transfer video to computer, play with it and put it in 3d max. then add polygons and/or whatever you want. perhaps have more text flash with miniscule amounts of actual animation. this is my 3rd year trying to complete an animaton and everytime i make it hard for myself b/c i want soo many things to do that are diffcult for me to produce w/ my level of experience. this year we have quite a few ppl working on it and i've told ap erson to read as much as he can about lighting and another for camera and motion. what me and other friend are doing is just making models of everythign in animation. hopefully in a few days we can come together and put everything in order. anyways good luck! best thing to do is use tutorials for everything yo uwant to do but just dont get too complex! complexity will sometimes cause you to waste hours and even days in animation. and remember, sometimes it takes hours to render a few pictures in animation. so u might want to save 2 days just to render at end.

[jdiwnab]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

I hate to break it to you but I'm afraid you are starting awfully late to be able to complete an animation considering your level of experience with the program. I would recommend practicing for next year instead.

Koko Ed does have a point. 3D studio max takes a long time to both learn and do for the competition. I won't stop you from trying this year, but get really good this year for next year.

[Han Tzu]

I say, Keep it simple, and it can happen. With a lot of hard work though. But I hope you start soon. And if you only learn the basics of animation and modeling, use those basics. The best ideas, are usually the simplest ones. Good Luck!

[Waldo1641]

Alright Guys,
Thank you for the advice. Perhaps I can convince the leader of our team to let the video slide this year, as we are rookies, and practice for next year. I've looked at some of the tutorials.... they seem somewhat helpful. My major problem is mentors. I have no mentors to help me out. By the way... i like that statistician joke, lol

[Yov]

contact me with some IM program or email, i'll mentor you.