Are there really only 82 animations this year? Last year there were 224. Any ideas why?
1625 hosted a 1 day camp last summer and the animation classes filled up first. (Although we did have a more limited number than some ot the other classes.) I thought there might be more this year.
Well, we had about 5 people on our animation, 3 that showed up, and 1 that did anything. And he spent more time and got more done in the shop.
no, I don’t think so. I started looking at them when there were 22 up there, and it was at 81 yesterday. I think it’s just taking a while to get them all up on the page which is why they haven’t put an official link yet.
that makes sense 
I imagine it is a lot of work for them to get everything in order.
thanks,
I think the reasoning generally stems from a lack of knowledgeable people. If you think about it, most teams have mentors that are familiar with certain aspects of the team, whether it be CAD, Machining, business or what ever. However, I do not know of a team (though I’m sure there are at least a few) that have mentors that work with 3DsMax in their jobs.
Our animation team (2 years ago when we actually still had one) consisted of 3 people who had no idea what they were doing, even after managing a few simple clips, no one really knew how we were going to come up with an animation idea and then create it, on top of that no one could find the rules for the animation stuff and later found out that we had passed the deadline anyways.
Personally, I think they would get more entries for the animation if they allowed the use of other software as well (at a teams own expense of course), in my experience I’ve found 3DsMax is NOT very user friendly when compared with other options out there. :o
In the general scheme of things, I think when teams prioritize, they look at animations as a secondary objective, and if they’re not even sure if they’re going to be able to finish one, why even try? Not the best attitude but unless you have a team with like 50 people, it’s the reality of the competition.
[/rant] :rolleyes:
Where are you guys seeing this? Are the animations grouped by regional already like they were yesterday? I’d like to see what kind of competition there will be at the regionals our team is going to.
the link was posted under “2009: Post a Link to Your Animation” –
http://firstbasefrc.autodesk.com/?&nd=m_first_competition_vis2009_viewer&base=26
but it is now up to 101 from 82, so \i think they are still working on them.
I think it might have to do with the fact that this year’s season was so off center that it might have thrown some teams off.
When resources get tight and there just aren’t as many kids to go around animation is always the first to go.
Yes, especially given a theme that found teams hard-pressed to come up with anything worth animating.
“Do you have any good ideas?”
“Um, not really.”
“Meh, let’s just not do an animation this year.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
I agree that it would be better for this teams, however, Autodesk sponsors the award. Also, FIRST is basically about learning new things, even if it is hard. 3dsmax does have a huge learning curve–the interface is unlike anything most students have ever used before, but once you understand the gist, it’s easy enough to do some decent work.
As for finding students, I’ve found that it’s best to work with a smaller number of students anyway. Having too much going on is hard to put together and collaborate, especially since you can only have one person on a computer anyway.
It’s hard, true, but it’s what I’ve been doing for years so I want to see it kept alive
I still say animation is the illegitimate child of the FIRST family locked away in the attic and never spoken about.
Surely such a group of creative individuals could come up with SOME idea (and I know you all are very creative based on past posts
Consider it a challenge…
lol, I’m trying to figure out a way to change that. When I see how much it influenced Pete (BuddyB309), I realize that this has so much to offer students. Maybe if they were due at different times? I know that most of the kids that learned the program over the summer and fall, worked mostly on the robot. If they hadn’t had to choose between the two, they would have helped with the animation also.
I keep telling people who whine about the animation not getting done, “its the FIRST ROBOTICS competition, not the FIRST ANIMATION contest. Now get back in the shop and cut that piece I told you to.”
I personally think the animation competition needs major league retooling to make it actually legitimate and useful instead of the sideshow afterthought that it is.
It should be made into a video design competition that features animation to create 2 minute team previews that can be shown during the eventual downtime that occur at the events due to the field breaking down.
Not a bad idea actually, that way anyone who can figure out a camera and Windows Movie Maker would at least be able to submit something, maybe setup a point system for it where you get more points for having an animation in it, but it wouldn’t require you to have one in order to submit one. :rolleyes:
WHOA!!! that hurts. You might as well stabbed me in the chest with a monkey wrench. When I joined robotics, I thought I was going to be a mechanical engineer. FIRST taught me I HATE engineering, but then I found animation. And fell deeply in love with it. I now think of nothing other than animation and loving every bit of it. Which is far better than me being in my sophomore year of college just now finding out I hate engineering and not know what to do.
It hurts when people say that to teammates. Some of my teamates wanted me off the team because I wasn’t helping with the robot when I did animation for the first year. Animation is HARD. Let die hard animation lovers be. Don’t force them to do something they don’t like.
True, however, if you don’t have a finished robot to compete with then an animation isn’t really going to do you much good will it? Granted if you have enough people on the team to get the robot done, so be it, but it is a reality for some teams that there are sometimes just not enough people to have some off working on side projects like animation and such. 
I have no intentions of dragging animators away from 3ds max. The one guy who did anything on the animation team was more intent on the robot getting done, I was just keeping him on task. We lost our true animator last year to JMU.