I am a mentor for the FIRST Robotics team at a small school in Central, Illinois. We are attempting to enter a Autodesk 3DS Max project into a competition. However we are running into a huge issue.
We have completed our animation, however after reviewing the rules, we have found that we need to insert a 5 second “slate” and a 1 second black screen into the beginning. We are lost as my students are self taught. If you have any ideas, please post an answer. We have worked on this project for 6 weeks, and would hate to be unable to enter.

Take a look at the Video Post feature - and read up on it in the help. There are examples there which may well be of use.

If you’re still stuck then post back, but we’ll need a little more info. How long to re-render the project? Didi you render direct to .avi? (bad idea btw). Is the “slate” a simple bitmap? Stuff like that.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Hey Teach,
I did a quick search and it looks like a slate is just a shot in the beginning with some info on the movie, such as: http://www.youngfilmmakersclub.com/SLATEjpg.html
It can easily be created in a graphics program such as MS Paint or Photoshop and inserted in a video compositing program or (I’ve not used it, but I suppose) Max video post,
along with the black screen.
Have you gone to the Q&A section of First Robotics or the forums?
http://www.usfirst.org/

I videoed my nephew’s team back in 2004 here in Michigan and created a DVD it was a lot of fun.
I did a mock up of the competition area in Max and an animated primer on the rules for that year, adding text and sound in After Effects.
They went to nationals, but dropped out soon after getting there.

Don

Max 2012
Windows 7 64 SP1