In our first week we were asked to complete a simple animation of a bouncing ball in Maya.
Principles used:
- Timing of the bouncing ball which reflects the weight of gravity in real life.
- Slow In, Slow Out of the ball as movement and speed changes as the ball hits the floor
24 frames = 1 second
12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 = key frame sequence of a bouncing ball
The key frames reduces by 2 each time the ball bounces. This is due to the speed of the ball on impact on the ground progressively reduces on each bounce because of the reducing in height over which the force of gravity is applied.
Using the graph editor I was able to shape the lines into the bouncing ball path. The peak of each arc are made to slow down the ball were as the sharp acute angles at the bottom touching the floor speed up the ball. The ball is changing direction so quickly so that it looks as though it is bouncing off of a flat hard surface.
I added in the tail ghost so that the motion trail is visible after the ball as moved. This is a good way to visually see if your ball is bouncing in smooth arcs and snappy bounces. The ball in the tail will be more spacious between each other in the arcs. And very close together when the ball touches the floor.
This is my first time using the program so I wanted to familiarise myself with how the new interface worked. I had to convert my existing knowledge of Cinema 4D into Maya. I made my bouncing ball into a character. Added a backdrop and colour to give a little personality and fun to the simple animation.
Principles used:
- Staging – Creating a simple blue back drop, giving the illusion of a sky.
- Solid building – where I built the clouds and swirl as objects the ball would hit in the maze.
Final Bouncing Ball
I wanted to learn how to render each of the projects so I started off with my simple bounding ball to render. I used the pipeline on the uni computers. I followed Lukes tutorial on how to select the correct settings so that the Deadline render farm would successfully render my animation. I had a few issues at first because I didn’t understand that the files all had to be on the uni system in order for the render farm to access it. This was useful figuring this out now so that when I had texted and images in my animation – I would know to link them on the uni system.
Design a Maze for the Bouncing Ball
I wanted to keep to the theme of my first animation but add fun objects in which my ball would bounce off of. I built puffy clouds and shiny red spirals. The scene became too hectic and took focus off of the little yellow ball so I simplified the set I designed.
I wanted there to be a pin ball effect in the spiral to contrast the large rounded arcs of the bounces on the clouds.
Final Bouncing Ball Maze
Things I could do better next time:
- Add in the Squash and Stretch principle
- Improve the arcs on the red spiral
I improved the arcs in my animations and added in squash and stretch to the ball. I also made the clouds look as though they were marshmallow like material. I did this by making the ball melt into the cloud shape compered to the spiral which I kept as a solid object.