Bouncing ball and Maze

Bouncing ball

This is the first time I tried to do the bouncing ball through Maya, the process to finish bouncing ball animation shows the basics of animation and I use 4 principles in this animation. I added the transition along theY-axis. the ball bouncing height starts from 10 at frame 1, 0 at frame 12, 8 at frame 24. this is the first session, the second session is 0 at frame 34, 6 and frame 44, 0 at frame 52, and so on. The height will decrease 2 every bounce and the frames will decrease 2 every session. this process contains 2 principles timing and Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose.

The next step is to adjust the tangent on the curves through the graphic editor, this is where the principle ease in and ease out comes in. The curves in the graphic editor clearly show the bouncing ball’s motion trail, when I adjusted the tangent make sure every tangent is on the right point shows on the Y-axis.

After that, I add the transition along X-axis, to animate the ball jumping a short distance, I edit the X-axis curve in Graphic editor make sure the arcs looks smooth.

Squash and Stretch is my favorite part, this principle shows what happens when a ball hits the ground. The force of the motion squashes the ball flat, but because an object needs to maintain its volume, it also widens on impact. I added the transition along the scale Y. A big problem shows out when the ball squash to the ground, it trapped in the ground. I readjust the Y-axis to raise the ball up to the ground.

the last part is to add the ghost to the bouncing ball, it comes to the Follow-Through and Overlapping Action principle, I set the step in the animation display preference, the parameter is the same as Luke did in the lecture.

even though the bouncing ball animation I did is really simple but I still spend 3 hours on it, cause I this is the first time i use maya, I try to familiar with this software.

Maze

when I started to design the maze, I hope I could design an interesting maze so I try to search for different maze designs online, like this.

I am noticed that I need to put the points on the arcs of the motion track, don’t overthink about the maze, so I design a simple maze and start to draw a simple storyboard in my notebook, to make sure the motion track of the ball and transition the Y-axis and Z-axis on Maya. Firstly I don’t want the ball to have ‘life’, let the Anticipation principle come in. I would like to try to use more principles, so I let the ball bouncing like alive. the first frame is the ball accumulate then jump high and hit to the ceiling. Also, I adjust the tangent, to make the animation looks smooth.

the second part is to add Squash and Stretch to the ball, I met the same problem as I animate the bouncing ball, the bouncing ball will trap in the wall or the ground. so I raise a bit upper or lower of the ball to make sure it won’t have this problem.