Bouncing Ball Animation!

 Alright everyone! 

It's the moment you've all been waiting for! 

I finally finalized my animation of the bouncing ball in Maya. I've come a long way from my first two posts, learning how to use the Graph Editor and squashing and stretching. I am still learning how to light in Maya, so please pardon some of the glare. Once I get that down, I would be happy to re-render these shots so you can see the ball bounce in all of its 3D glory.

Before I drop my Playblast below, I wanted to let you know that there are two different balls at play in this animation. You heard that right, I'm learning how to imply weight through animation, so we have a tennis ball (the green colored ball) and a bowling ball. 

Initially, I was going to do a beach ball, but I couldn't get the timing right (it looked like it was sliding instead of floating), so I changed it to a tennis ball. I based the tennis ball off of a life study, whereas the bowling ball came from a video (as I do not keep a bowling ball with me in my dorm).

Prior to starting the animation, I actually drew some arcs for my initial beach ball and bowling ball, which were based on frame timings from videos and gifs on the internet. 

This video features my initial arc for the beach ball animation. Notice how light it is- it takes half of the animation to do half of the arc! It's very floaty, too, which is something I had difficulty capturing in Maya. I'm going to consult with some of my peers and come back to this exercise in the future. I really want to learn how to do this, as it seems like a fun challenge! 

And here is the bowling ball. Notice how quickly it falls and is on the ground rolling. I adjusted my roll in Maya, as after referencing other videos, I noticed that a bowling ball stops after about 3 bounces and a teeny amount of rolling. In fact, the whole arc of a bowling ball should only take 2 seconds or less. 

Now that you know the origin story of this bouncing ball animation, why don't I give you a look at the final product? 

I'm really happy with how this turned out! I have never made a 3D table, let alone animated TWO bouncing balls before! I'm stoked that you can tell that both balls behave differently. It was difficult to achieve that effect, but I'm happy I pulled it off!

Because of the lighting, it's a little hard to see the wall I put in the video. Don't worry, I've got a different angle for you below! 

I have a couple of individual shots of each respective ball, so you can get a feel for their behaviors a bit more. 

Here is the bowling ball rolling off a table and bouncing. I wanted to give both of the balls a piece of setting to interact with, so the bowling ball interacted with the table, while the tennis ball interacted with the wall! 

Both of my references were around 4-5 seconds in length, so I feel that the 110 frame length was perfect for both. I'm especially pleased with how the tennis ball animation turned out, especially since it bounces against the ball and travels backward! It took me a while to figure out the graph editor, especially with the rotation, but I'm happy with what I did! 

Notice how the ball's arcs get smaller and smaller as it continues. Also, take a look at all of these values! I added them procedurally, so I was only working on one at a time. That way, I was able to perfect parts of the animation before moving onto other steps. 

And look how different it looks from the bowling ball's movements! It sharply drops down because it fell of the table, bounces once for real, and then a TEENY bit for a final time before rolling a couple of units. Bowling balls don't really move forward, they almost bounce in place, which was tricky to make natural in my work. I'm pretty happy about the final result, though! 

Now, do you want to see some progress shots? Here are some rough cuts of some of the first passes of this animation challenge! 

This was before I had the tennis ball do any squashing or stretching! I was just happy to have it bounce off the wall. Thank goodness for the graph tool! 

And here was one of the first passes of the Bowling Ball. It kind of floats before it fully rolls off the table. Almost like an anticipation (cue Wile E. Coyote!). I did this because the bowling ball was actually clipping through the table, and I had to make the table a bit bigger to prevent this. Thankfully, it resolved itself and the ball looks more natural and less like a Looney Toons cartoon! 

So that's my Ball Bounce animation! I hope you enjoyed watching my process and learning a bit more about my Animation Journey! Thank you for stopping by to read- I'll keep you posted on my future animated endeavors soon! 

Bye-Bye!