SkillsUSA National Competition
Hello Polycount!
This past week I have been in Kansas City for a nationwide high school competition called SkillsUSA. Skills is a career based competition, with over 100 different contests ranging from welding to culinary arts to hairdressing to mobile robotics. They have almost every skill-based career you can think of. Me and my partner Ismael Marquez competed in 3D visualization and animation, a team competition.
In this competition, we are given 8 hours to make a complete animation usually ranging from 10 to 30 seconds. Normally, at the beginning of the 8 hours, we are given a sort of 'prompt' with which to storyboard and animate from. We don't find out the prompt until right before we start, so teams can't prepare for a specific style or setting beforehand. At the national competition, the judges surprised us and provided a storyboard to work from, making it more challenging for teams to show a creative edge over another.
Long story short, me and my partner placed first at the district and state competitions, going on to represent Texas at the national event this past week. The national event is a huge deal, bringing in around 15 thousand competitors, mentors, judges, and more to Kansas City. This was my first year competing in SkillsUSA, and I was really surprised by the whole event. All 50 states plus many US territories have competitors in SkillsUSA, and it's an awesome experience meeting people from all across the US and learning about where they live and the competition they're competing in.
We also got to meet several industry workers specifically for our competition, including an Autodesk representative (who was pretty fun to talk to because he knew we were on of the very few teams using Blender), an ex dreamworks vet, and a very special guest from Europe representing Unity, Will Goldstone.
Sorry for all the rambling,a lot of it's still fresh and exciting, I'll get to the point
. We ended up taking first place at the national competition! Besides the biggest prize of being national champs, me and my partner each received the full Autodesk creation suite ultimate 2014, Unity Pro, a $10,000 scholarship to any Ai school (which unfortunately we can't use because we're planning on different schools), a 3DConnexion Space Explorer, and a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse Pro.
Now, I have a quick question. My partner doesn't plan on doing 3D as a career, and he's quite happy just using Blender for his stuff. So, he's considering selling his never used Autodesk creation suite ultimate 2014. If he decides to sell, how would he best go about it to get the most out of it?
Thanks for reading this far, and I just want to say THANK YOU POLYCOUNT for all you've taught me! I don't know if we could have done it without all I've learned in this great community. As a small sign of gratitude, I'm considering selling my new 3DConnexion Space Explorer on here at a reduced price. Thanks again everyone!
This past week I have been in Kansas City for a nationwide high school competition called SkillsUSA. Skills is a career based competition, with over 100 different contests ranging from welding to culinary arts to hairdressing to mobile robotics. They have almost every skill-based career you can think of. Me and my partner Ismael Marquez competed in 3D visualization and animation, a team competition.
In this competition, we are given 8 hours to make a complete animation usually ranging from 10 to 30 seconds. Normally, at the beginning of the 8 hours, we are given a sort of 'prompt' with which to storyboard and animate from. We don't find out the prompt until right before we start, so teams can't prepare for a specific style or setting beforehand. At the national competition, the judges surprised us and provided a storyboard to work from, making it more challenging for teams to show a creative edge over another.
Long story short, me and my partner placed first at the district and state competitions, going on to represent Texas at the national event this past week. The national event is a huge deal, bringing in around 15 thousand competitors, mentors, judges, and more to Kansas City. This was my first year competing in SkillsUSA, and I was really surprised by the whole event. All 50 states plus many US territories have competitors in SkillsUSA, and it's an awesome experience meeting people from all across the US and learning about where they live and the competition they're competing in.
We also got to meet several industry workers specifically for our competition, including an Autodesk representative (who was pretty fun to talk to because he knew we were on of the very few teams using Blender), an ex dreamworks vet, and a very special guest from Europe representing Unity, Will Goldstone.
Sorry for all the rambling,a lot of it's still fresh and exciting, I'll get to the point
. We ended up taking first place at the national competition! Besides the biggest prize of being national champs, me and my partner each received the full Autodesk creation suite ultimate 2014, Unity Pro, a $10,000 scholarship to any Ai school (which unfortunately we can't use because we're planning on different schools), a 3DConnexion Space Explorer, and a 3DConnexion SpaceMouse Pro.Now, I have a quick question. My partner doesn't plan on doing 3D as a career, and he's quite happy just using Blender for his stuff. So, he's considering selling his never used Autodesk creation suite ultimate 2014. If he decides to sell, how would he best go about it to get the most out of it?
Thanks for reading this far, and I just want to say THANK YOU POLYCOUNT for all you've taught me! I don't know if we could have done it without all I've learned in this great community
. As a small sign of gratitude, I'm considering selling my new 3DConnexion Space Explorer on here at a reduced price. Thanks again everyone!
Replies
Edit: Also congrats on winning
as for the licenses, you should check to see if they are NFR licenses or not. it is highly likely that those are in fact NFR licenses since you won them in a contest.
NFR are not for resale and you also cannot upgrade them either.
I forgot to mention that he got the non-digital USB version. I don't know that much about installing and registering, but I assume that registration happens during installation (which he hasn't done yet). I could be wrong about that, cause I'm just guessing. Does that change anything?
I'll check on the NFR license.
This is really a question best answered by a lawyer unfortunately
We definitely don't want to do anything illegal, especially after Autodesk gave us the whole suite free. Didn't know is was such an issue, guess we'll need to research a bit. Thanks for the info guys
@WDewel Thanks! We were staying a little further north at the Marriott, but we did go by crown center on the way to home depot. We had shipped our PCs to the Texas director to hold for us until we got there via FedEx, but when we did eventually get them on Monday, it looked as though someone had tried stealing or sabotaging the parts. All of my motherboard screws were gone, and the only thing holding up my motherboard was my graphics card still attached to the back of the case. It was bent pretty badly, but amazingly all of the hardware still worked. So we ended up taking a bus to home depot to get screws... it was an interesting first day! :poly121:
I was there too participating in Internetworking competition. I got a bronze
That's a great idea! As long as the school is part of a SkillsUSA chapter, the rest is easy enough. The school doesn't even need a 3d class (ours doesn't). All I did was ask the teacher that does Skills at our school to sign us up. He'd never heard of our competition before, but he still went for it.
I think the hardest part is finding a good partner. Many high schoolers who would be interested are probably self taught, which a lot of the time means they're the only one at their school who knows how to do it. I had to search out someone who said they would be interested and who I thought would be dedicated enough. And who I could live with happily for a week in KC haha. I ended up teaching him 3d from scratch.
I do agree 100% with you, it's a great competition and a great experience. If there's any way I can help get fellow polycounters into Skills, I would do it in a second!
On the topic of reselling, why not just keep it. The autodesk suite is bound to be useful eventually, even if your friend does modeling on the side or for fun.