Introduction
Well, that’s not my first time to do bouncing ball, because I used to animate it in both 2D animation and 3d animation. Whatever, I know it is a real basic animated principle, I believe that I should practice again and again to master it.
TIPS:
- Go to preferences to change the animation settings.
- Go to graph Editor to adjust the Translate X to became a straight line after key frames.
- Noticing the timing when the ball fall down.
PROBLEM:
- Sometimes I can’t use Ghostobeject.
- I cannot control the point apart from using middle button in graph editor.
Bouncing ball
Different from what I have learnt before, Luke taught us a detailed information such as timing and spacing of animating our bouncing ball. So, I just adjusted what he said, for example, keyed in first frame to let the ball in 10 unit high and then keyed 24th frame to let the ball in 8 unit high and so on… I can get a standard bouncing ball animation.
There is something new in Luke taught: CreateMotionTrail & GhostObject.
CreateMotionTrail: It can create a trail of object moving so people can check if the movement beautiful. Also, if it doesn’t need, it can be hided and deleted in outliner.
GhostObject: It can create a ghost before or after object moving. So, people can check object’s position in different frames. Also, if people want to change the number of ghost, they can go to preferences to change.
And, when I animated the ball, I forgot to go to preferences to change my choices, which led to my first display was looked a little bit weird. And what’s more, I did not remember that I needed to change line Translate X to a straight line.
By the way, I didn’t do the squash and stretch in my ball, because I think I am a new 3D animation student and I should follow what tutor suggest: To handle the fundamental timing and spacing.
Bouncing ball maze
I haven’t done ball moving in a maze in 3D, before I began to work, I seriously watched the teaching video in Moodle. Probably, this an absolute challenge to me.
Firstly, I design the maze in paper, and what I really would like to do is that my ball roll in semicircle, just like skiing. Therefore, I drew several platforms and two semicircles and modelled in Maya,
(What I want to say is I find I have forgot lots of basic knowledge about Maya, such as modeling!!! That’s mean I need to study it again!!!)
It’s easy for me to do bouncing ball at the beginning, for the reason that it just bounded on the platform. However, when the ball bounced after touching the first wall and falling into the semicircle, I found it is difficult.
As we know, it will be quick until the ground rises, which means controlling the gap between two frames is pretty important. So, I needed to pay attention on timing and spacing.
Look at the middle tract, after rolling up to the first semicircle, the speed should be slow down, however, when I adjust it in distance and time, I found that I cannot handle well. The ball often accelerated in a split second for the evidence that I key wrong frames or adjust too long distance.
The second problem was when the ball left the ground, the position was difficult to put.
Look at the final tract, after rolling down to the second semicircle, I need to speed it up until it collided the wall and rebounded. In order to watch clearly, I drew a sketch to note. In conclusion, the kinetic energy of the ball is decreasing all the time.
I tried and tried again. And it’s time to render. Unfortunately, I cannot find the format qt, which was different from what tutor showed, after browsing the internet, I downloaded QuickTime, and successfully rendered my two work and submit these.
Review
After review, I save a new file and do my bouncing animation maze again. As Luke said, I made mistakes in rebounded at the first wall and controlled spacing in 75th frames.
So, I adjust the frames and position when it rebounded and falling down. Besides, I really felt wired in the last moving, it was seemed that the ball moved so quickly all the time, and without a stop after climbing the semicircle. That’s what I did it again.
review2(update on 201120)
Thanks for Luke, I can knew what problems in my second works.
What I need to review first is that switch on CreateMotionTrail and it is clear how my ball runs.
Then I need to make sure that my character’s track is always a line! Just like a bouncing ball, translate X should be straight.
After that, don’t break the handle, if do we can use plateau tengants高原切线 to recover. And try to expand the curve.
We do the same change in all the translateX-bacoming more liner!
If the subeject contact or rebound with surface or something, the contact point need to be use break tangents破坏曲线 to reflect the reflection. Also don’t forget the liner.
It’s just a slightly adjustment to make the ball moves nomally.
The curve need to be more expand to show slow out.
There are continuous adjustments.
Firstly, in translate X(move in front-Z like speed), we should make it become a line.
However as we see, the ball would move in the ground because the it is slow down as translate X turning down. So we need to adjust it in translate Y(the height) to rise its position.
At last, we will find that the point isn’t in the middle, so we can turn up the translate X to speed up the ball, and the point will go forward.
Conclusion
That’s the first animation I did in my MA class, so after this attempting I found that I still have confuse and problem in bouncing ball and Maya software. So, working hard Lucy!!!