Bouncing Ball Animation

Introduction

In this assignment I had to build an environment and animate two balls bouncing, comparing and contrasting their bounce, resulting in a 15 second movie.

Preproduction

Planning.

I planned to make everything step by step;

• Set the project

• Stage, camera and lights

• First ball and graphs

• Second ball and graph

• Squash and squeeze

• Texturing

• Timing

• Rotation and graph

• Play-blast

• Title

• Compositing in Premier Pro

Schedule

Friday: Set the project Stage, camera and lights First ball and graphs

Thursday: Second ball and graph Squash and squeeze Texturing Timing

Friday: Rotation and graph Compositing in Premier Pro Play-blast Title

Saturday: Workbook Edits Uploading

Mood Board & Colour Pallet

I chose to have this project light and airy with the spotlights setting a darker surrounding whilst causing a spotlight on the action. I did this so both the basketball and the tennis ball would stand out. Also there would be a strong contrast of colour that would bring your eyes to the centre of the main action.

Resource Material

I looked up specific textures for the basketball, tennis ball and table on google images. I saved a few before I decided which I was going to use. I looked up and made videos of balls bouncing for reference. I downloaded sounds for a finishing touch.

Story

Storyboard

The plan was to have the basketball bounce across the screen first showing it’s big and heavy method of bouncing and then the tennis ball which is lighter and has erratic and higher bounce. Then just like in the video we watched in class I wanted to show what happens when a tennis ball is bounced off a basketball.

Animatic

I tested the above by making my own videos of different types of balls bouncing. After that I went ahead and made sphere for the basketball and set it on the stage and later I did the same for the tennis ball.

Block Test

I had the stage, backdrop and balls made and set into place, so I set up my lights and cameras. I did this to make sure that everything was in the right position. I did a few run-throughs with just the basketball setting general key-frames so I could tell if this idea was going to work.

Design

Character Design!

In this animation the characters where the balls. I had one basketball and tennis ball. I chose these because they’re easier to compare and contrast as they are so different in size, weight, bounce and speed.

Sound

I researched different sounds of balls bouncing. When I chose the two balls I was creating I searched for those sounds and saved them, so I could use them later on in Premier Pro.

Environment Design

My environment was a light almost linoleum texture for the table and a bright blue sky with clouds. I made my environment bright so that the colours of the balls would stand out. Red for the basketball and green for the tennis ball.

Modelling

Project set up

I set the project:

Created the stage:

Created the backdrop:

Positioned the lights:

Placed the cameras:

Check UI Elements

Some things on the user interface were hard to find because I had to change the shelves.

I mostly used shortcuts to navigate my way around. (S to set key-frame)

I found the graph-editor complicated at first, I soon figured it out and was able to manipulate it to make my bounces and rotations seem realistic.

Preferences

I preferred the graph-editor over the dope-sheet as my dope-sheet didn’t show what it was supposed to but that’s because when I saved my file on my USB, I only saved the Maya interface and not the source files, which I had to fill in later.

The animation process

Pose to pose

I set the key-frames for the basketball first. The lowest and then the highest point and the roll out. Then I did the same for the tennis-ball which didn’t roll out because it’s lighter and would bounce for longer. I changed views to make sure the balls where touching the ground during the bounce.

Timing

I don’t have a problem with timing, I set each frame for the balls and then selected them and spaced them out to fit in 312 frames to fill 13 seconds (A more natural timing) as the title was going to take 2 seconds.

Clean up

I made sure everything worked well together going through the animation multiply times very slowly to ensure rotation was going in the right direction and the squash and squeeze was appropriate through the camera view.

Rendering & Compositing

Rendering

To render this file I just exported the file through play-blast making sure the animation was correct beforehand. (Lights on and cameras in the right position)

Compositing in Premier Pro

I did this in Premier Pro as I don’t know how to use blender yet. I added in the title and spread it out for two seconds, then added the play-blast movie. I placed and cropped the sounds in making sure the timing lined up with the bounces and then exported that file.

Reflective Analysis

I really enjoyed this project as it was fun to play with.

I had to ask Eoghan for help with some parts, the graph-editor, texturing and replacing my source files.

I wanted to do some crazy things with this, making the balls bounce down stairs or make it seem like the whole stage was a box and have the balls bounce in and off the walls and each other.

I realised this would be too complicated for the timeframe we had.

I had trouble with making the balls rotate in one direction but eventually figured that out on the graph-editor by myself.

I had always heard about doing this sort of animation so I was excited to actually have one of my own, I always thought it would be simple to make and now that I’ve finished my first one I’m sure it will be simple from now on.

I would love to try this with an animal figure that bounces across the screen, using the squash and squeeze technique.

I found that after I edited the file in Premier Pro that the quality changed severely, so next time I will be more aware of this.

#animation #bouncing #ball #beginner #maya