This week I have been tasked with a goal to begin animating a bouncing ball. As discussed in a previous post, the bouncing ball is a great way to display the ’12 Principles of Animation’. I’ve had 3D experience before, but have never used AutoDesk Maya, nor have ever animated a model before. Having never done animation before, the bouncing ball will prove quite useful in learning the fundamentals and building useful habitual skills that will carry over into the working industry of animation or 3D as a whole.
So to begin, I believe it is quite useful to create a bounce guide sheet so I have a rough estimate of how I want the ball to bounce and the distance it will travel. So I took a screenshot of the model and photoshopped a simple trajectory of what I wanted to accomplish.
After creating the positioning of the ball and animating a keyframe, my motion trail has a nice uniform bounce until the very end, which does not look like it has a realistic finish, but my primary focus was to learn the practice of getting the bounce, squash and stretch as well as timing down as well as possible. After seeing the ball bounce along the trajectory with a nice even timing between time spent in the air, and time on the ground, it felt like a great start and a decent appeal.
After I had finished my positional bouncing, it was time to add rotation. Between each keyframe, I had made the ball rotate 90-degrees clockwise for a realistic direction and for a sense of direction that the ball is bouncing in. Naturally, a ball would not start or finish on a specific 90-degree angle, nor would it bounce so precisely between bounces. But as mentioned before, the goal isn’t to jump the gun and go for the most realistic approach, but rather to practice the fundamentals and how a ball rotates as it bounces through the air.
Lastly, after adding positional bouncing and incremental 90-degree rotations, I had to transform the ball to create a squash and stretch effect that would give a simulation that the ball is actually bouncing. However, depending on the ball material, they would bounce entirely different from each other, so I kept with a common rubbery ball type of feeling, which would allow me to create the necessary feeling that was needed.
Overall, considering this was my first attempt at creating a bouncing ball animation in a new program at that, it was quite enjoyable. I can see many flaws within my own animation and can see already the skills I need to hone on. Specifically spending more time researching how balls bounce, and mimicking the arcs that these balls make on each bounce. Furthermore, fixing the squash and stretch so that the ball looks like it’s bouncing up, rather than sideways would be a better way to show how dynamic the ball is. Of course, depending on the animation style, it can be acceptable to do this, but I am aware that my intentions were to go for a realistic rubber ball type-feel. The ball finishing can be touched up as well, slowly rolling to a stop rather than a sudden stop too. These are just a few mistakes within my own work that I see at my beginner level, and I plan to redo this project again to see further improvements within each revision.