Safety Animation Released

[mikecombes]

thanks for the post can't wait to try and make some kind of animation since its my first year even touching animation programs

[Setsanto]

Originally Posted by mikecombes

thanks for the post can't wait to try and make some kind of animation since its my first year even touching animation programs

that's what last year was like for me! as a general pointer, if an idea sounds way too basic/simplistic, its probably your best shot. Actually, that's what its still like for me .

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by mikecombes

thanks for the post can't wait to try and make some kind of animation since its my first year even touching animation programs

And please, for the love of all things holy, don't do human characters if this is your first attempt at animation. They are hard to make them turn out right.

[mikecombes]

well its my first year never heard of the program but at my school i am taking a animation class. i'm doing some pretty cool things in there. of course tracing the pictures helps too lol

[BuddyB309]

I feel like I should warn you all.

Animation is not something you can crank out over night, or even a week. Ok, wait, lets take that back a step. Good animation is not something you can crank out over night, or over a week. Be prepared to spend a LONG time in front of a computer.

For "The Most Extravagant Credits" It took me 3+ hours of work to get one second of animation with ted boardman. That doesn't include modeling, texturing, rigging, yada yada yada. Also leave a week for rendering.

You should all be making your characters for the AVA right now. Then you can have really good rigs on them and then use them for the AVA to fit the theme. I would really love to see a team have a purple cat with a yellow T-shirt on as their character then a "Realistic human" or "The Teams robot" or "The playing field" or "Generic bipedal Robot"

[Benny]

And please, for the love of all things holy, don't do human characters if this is your first attempt at animation. They are hard to make them turn out right.

So True..... Humanoids are the bane of existence. In my year of animating, they are by far the HARDEST to make look halfway decent. I still fail at it.

Animation is not something you can crank out over night, or even a week.

Again, True. We (58) took all 5 and a 1/2 weeks (minus most Sundays)or whatever it was for last year's normal competition (about 720 hours or so, I can't do math tonight, so that's probably wrong) and it still didn't turn out great.

[Setsanto]

However, don't let any of this scare you. While 3dsm has a VERY steep learning curve, you also get very tangible results out of it. When I succesfully UVW mapped something properly for the first time, I felt awesome. When our AVA entry was done, I was happy, even if it looked bad and as a result of a last minute mistake on my part the camera ended up going through a wall . So just remember to have fun while you're banging your head against the computer screen. Trust me on this one, you'll enjoy the headache more.

~Setsanto

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by Setsanto

However, don't let any of this scare you. While 3dsm has a VERY steep learning curve, you also get very tangible results out of it. When I succesfully UVW mapped something properly for the first time, I felt awesome. When our AVA entry was done, I was happy, even if it looked bad and as a result of a last minute mistake on my part the camera ended up going through a wall . So just remember to have fun while you're banging your head against the computer screen. Trust me on this one, you'll enjoy the headache more.

~Setsanto

Word.

I remember the excitement I had when I got a sphere and a cone to act as the same object when I first started out with max. Wow that was a long time ago, I was working with max 5.

[Benny]

Originally Posted by BuddyB309

Word.

I remember the excitement I had when I got a sphere and a cone to act as the same object when I first started out with max. Wow that was a long time ago, I was working with max 5.

Max 5? Man. That's old school. I started messing 8 on my first year in FIRST; then we finally got enough interest in it to merit a "team" of 4 people (3 students and 1 mentor). Thus our first animation was born last year.

But yes, simple is the way to go....Now if only I can relay that to the rest of my team...

Also, YAY! 2009's done downloading on my computer!

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by Benny

Max 5? Man. That's old school. I started messing 8 on my first year in FIRST; then we finally got enough interest in it to merit a "team" of 4 people (3 students and 1 mentor). Thus our first animation was born last year.

But yes, simple is the way to go....Now if only I can relay that to the rest of my team...

Also, YAY! 2009's done downloading on my computer!

I still use max 8, Nothing drastic has really changed on max.

[mikecombes]

i love working on animating stuff i can sit in the computer for ever. i game for like 10 hours straight so thats not a problem for me. just makes it so i have a life lol

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by mikecombes

i love working on animating stuff i can sit in the computer for ever. i game for like 10 hours straight so thats not a problem for me. just makes it so i have a life lol

I say get off your gaming addiction, The last game I seriously played was.....hmmm... windwaker? but I never beat it. Ever since I got off games I've been pumping out animations left and right and getting REALLY good.

[Magiciandude]

Team 1746 has finished our safety animation.
You can find it under my youtube account magiciandude.
I'll post a concrete link to it when I get home, but I'm at school right now and youtube's blocked...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhHXq...&feature=email
this link might work. I got it in my email...so I don't actually know if it works or not...

Let us know what you think.
Most of the animation was done over thanksgivign break, but I didn't sleep...at all. Every hour of every day was spent animating. No breaks whatsoever(apart from meals of course), and I still would've gone back and refined it more if I had had more time...but we have to ship today.

-Chris