Basics of Animation in Maya

In this particular area of study, I have been looking into the theory of animation and trying to understand the technicalities of 3D space in terms of movement, kinematics and so on.

In my first lesson we had a basic theory lesson that revolved around thinking about an inanimate object constructively, this happened to be a bouncing ball. We had to think to ourselves..."to make something look as realistic as possible, what elements and characteristics must it have in terms of animation".

This brought me onto thinking what really happens when a ball is bouncing. It can be affected by so many different elements, for example:-

-What is the climate? A ball bounces higher if the temperature is high.

Is there an External Force?

-Is the ball solid or soft? A softer ball implies that it will bounce less.

-What is the mass, will the ball will bounce higher if it is heavier?

-What is the scale? If the ball is larger, it has a bigger diameter which means it will bounce longer and higher.

-In terms of animation, I had to think of how I could portray what a bouncing ball would actually look like, so to do this I had to think of the following qualities:-

-Is the ball going to be heavy?

-Is it going to cover a large surface area?

-Will it have squash and stretch characteristics? So if the ball lands, will it become smaller but wider?

All of these elements are key for creating a good animation; this exercise is brilliant, because even though it may seem simplistic, it gets you thinking constructively about how an actual real life scenario would happen.

Here are some videos i have recorded, of me and my friend Charlie bouncing different types of balls to see how long it takes for them to stop moving, as silly adn simple as this looks, its actually very important to understand how gravity works and how you can manipulate that with external force, such as throwing the ball instead of dropping it.

Here i will show a series of test videos, experimenting with different types of balls, taking into consideration the mass, speed and external force in which they fall and land. 

 

5.7 Seconds

8.3 Seconds

7.3 Seconds

7.5 Seconds

2.9 Seconds

1 Seconds

4.3 Seconds

After Collecting all of my reference material, a task was set where I had to create a bouncing ball animation. I did this using Maya. We did it using the Graph Editor using a series of tangents and handles which helped us make the bouncing ball look more realistic. 

Bouncing Ball Animation

Animation 1 - Soft Foam Ball (With Squash and Stretch) 

Animation 2 - Ping Pong Ball (no Squash and Stretch)

Task 3

After we experimented with ball animations, we were asked to create an animation that had ghosting  incorperated into the animation so the viewer could see the trail of the ball itself as it bounced throughout the scene. 

Ball Animation with Ghosting