Ball Animation.

Before moving onto character animation, it is important to learn the basics of animation. We are using Autodesk Maya, which at first glance to a new user like myself appears very complex and confusing, therefore we were given a pre-prepared ball, ready with rigging.

This was my first bouncing ball test. I was animating with the idea of a self propelled, flubber like ball. Against the principals of animation, I feel this animation works well in the confines of cartoon because of the heavily exaggerated squash and stretch, and the (somewhat) realistic slow in and out.

This was my second bounce test. I went for a more realistic approach to this animation with the thought of the ball being very solid, like a bowling ball.

For this bounce test, I had the idea of making it respond like a tennis ball would if thrown with backspin, the way it bounces high from the back spin, then bounces far from the front spin cause by the first bounce. I think the squash and stretch for this animation is very out and looks odd, however I believe it is an ok experiment as far as it still being early days for me with maya.

This is my final bounce test with the ball. I decided to get experimental and edited the reference file we were given to create a second, separate version which was shaped like a rugby ball. I then tried to mimic the way a rugby ball bounces to create a realistic looking bouncing rugby ball. As far as the ball and the path of the ball are concerned, I feel like I did a fairly decent job with this, however, at some points, I feel that the physics of the ball are slightly out. The slightly wrong physics is possibly due to me only animated on the Y axis, and not truly making the animation 3D in terms of it's movement in the world.