Advice, Please!

[kaye]

We've gotten our login code for voting in our regionals, and I am surprised at the lack of info and response from Autodesk on voting protocol.
I think that downloading for us is not such a big deal, since there are only 9 films competing in our regionals, but it is just goofy to expect every team to do this in order to view each animation. Autodesk should definitely warehouse the streaming videos (low-res version) on their site. Next year, they should require both hi and low-band versions of each movie to be submitted.

Okay, mostly finished griping; here's my question:

Autodesk WAS very clear about the rules of the AVA competition, but now that voting is imminent, they have disappeared. I'm just not sure how we (as peers voting in the 1st round of regionals) are supposed to tackle entries that may not meet the competition criteria. In our regional there are a couple of movies that came in after deadline, or that don't have a slate, etc.....

What is our graciously professional take on this? I told my team that I don't want to vote for a movie only to find out that it was disqualified by the judges in the next round. On the other hand, I really don't want to vet the entries; that shouldn't be our job.

I've sent a couple of emails to Autodesk peeps, but haven't gotten a reply yet....what do YOU think?

[Capt.ArD]

i went ahead and voted for the ones that should be disqualified, but i took it into accound and scored those slightly lower. I figured that if the judges allow them to still compete that's fine, but in my opinion they did not adequately meet requirements.

[Tim Delles]

In all honesty the teams knew their constraints with both the robot and all of the award submissions.

Would you allow a robot that was out of box or over wieght to still win? Or would they be disqualified?

This is not a question about gracious professionalism, but a question of why did they not follow the guidelines set down?

[kaye]

Well, I guess if we all stood around and knocked each other's bots, declaiming their faults (and getting them disqualified in the process) then it wouldn't be very gracious.......that's kinda what I meant. I think that it would have been nice if Autodesk had done that work for us--just as overweight, etc. bots wouldn't be allowed to play the game.

[3DMentorTeam388]

Kaye,

What we did was to still score the animation, but we took into account the fact they didn't follow the rules and gave them a low score. One animation was almost 1 Gig in size. We tried to download it, but since our regional was in week 1 we didn't have time. What we ended up doing was to give that team 0's because Autodesk said each entry had to have a score, and in the email we got on voting instructions, it said if any animation was un-viewable then to score it 0.

Lee

[abroerman]

Keep in mind that many teams submitted late animations (a day or two late) due to errors on Autodesk's side. Please do not dock these teams points due to something that was likely beyond their control; this is for Autodesk to judge.

In our case, it took nearly 4 days for Autodesk to copy over our animation due to the fact that the site had exceeded size limits. While it is impossible to tell what team had a valid reason and who didn't, for the time being, judge them as you would any other. That being said, unmet criteria otherwise (those that are within a team's control, such as incorrect codecs) should, in my opinion, have an effect on score.

[kaye]

Thanks, everyone. You've been a big help!

[BruceJ]

Originally Posted by 3DMentorTeam388

Kaye,
in the email we got on voting instructions, it said if any animation was un-viewable then to score it 0.
Lee

We had trouble opening one of the animations and when I updated to the latest Quicktime, then it worked.

However, there were others that just didn't seem to work at all.

[Li Jianliang]

My team decided to score every team's animation fairly even if it was uploaded late, in the wrong format, etc., because we had our own share of rendering and upload problems and Autodesk still graciously accepted our entry.

I also found one team at the last Regional that my team attended (Pacific Northwest) had its animation zipped up and all. I took out the file and re-uploaded it in hopes that other teams would score it, too. One team had its animation in one Regional but not the PNW one, where it was given a folder to upload, so I went back and copy & pasted the animation into the PNW folder, too. I think the every team should deserve a chance to be judged.

I'm personally leaving it up to Autodesk to disqualify those that they do not see fit.