I created an animation of a bouncing ball in Maya. To do this we used a ready made rig that could be stretched, moved and spun around to do this. I stuck with using the simple stretching and moving controls, as I started this project late. However I'm proud of myself for doing this so quickly, as I'm new at animating in Maya.
This was the reference I used in Maya. I decided to go with something simple as 3D animation isn't my strong point and I started this project late. It helped me a lot to have a guide like this, although if I ever do something like this again I'd much rather use something I've drawn to do this. It was a little annoying when the ball didn't quite fit the drawing template.
Once the image plane was in, I got to work. I had been using this image as a practice before I started this, and the animation was way too fast. I hadn't changed the frame rate, and everything was happened in a split-second. So I deleted all the frames and started again.
I made sure I started with the ball squished like in the reference, before slowly moving it up and saving the position. I hadn't known about this when I'd first started animating, and it had been a nightmare trying to fix everything.
I also started stretching out the ball instead of squashing it, which made it look like it was going a lot faster than it really was.
Once I made it to the top position of the bounce, I had no idea how to bring it back down. I decided to just recreate the positions I had already done, but going down. I didn't look too out of place, so I kept doing it.
When I got back down to the 'ground', I checked the animation through and found that it was too fast. This meant I would have to move around all the keyframes if I wanted to change it. I decided to keep it as it was, because it wasn't too fast, but upon changing the frame settings, the animation became too slow. However, I didn't want to go back and change it, and the animation looked like a slow-motion scene, which I found interesting, so I kept it.
I playblasted it in 3D and 2D, these are the videos below:
This is the 3D playblast of the bouncing ball. With the rig still rendered you can see when I stretched it and when I squashed it.
This is the 2D playblast of the bouncing ball. It's harder to see the rig because of the view, but the line on the side of the ball shows where the stretch and squash is happening.
Overall, I think I did well with 3D animation. Since 2D modelling is more my strong point, I struggled with the frame count and timing of animating a bouncing ball. If I could do this project again, I'd plan the frames and timing better, but I'd still keep it to a simple jump instead of including any obstacles.
I'm still proud of my project, because this was one of the first times I've done 3D animation. This helped me get better at 3D animation, as I'm more aware of the mistakes and tendencies I have towards it. A good way to tackle any frame rate issues would probably be to time something in real-life and use the timings there. This would also make an animation more accurate.
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