Assignment #1: Bouncing Ball

Resources:

  • Ball rig to use with this assignment.
  • Richard Williams Animator's Survival Kit (see copy in lab)
  • 458 Animation Exercises:
    1. Basic Animation Exercise
    2. Graph Editor Exercise
    3. Animation Principles (non-flash)

  • Part 1: Bouncing Balls

    We will provide two balls with distinctly different physical properties. Dropping them from the same height, observe how the balls bounce comparatively. Pay attention to how high they bounce, how much their bounce height dissipates, and how they settle (e.g. roll to a stop).

    You will then animate both balls bouncing with forward momentum in an orthographic side view. Use the provided ball rig. Remember to animate at 30 fps.

    Keep in mind animation principles like squash and stretch, slow-in slow-out, timing, and arcs. Also keep in mind that you are animating a "normal" bouncing ball that doesn't have a mind of its own. So, for example, you generally shouldn't see squash and stretch when playing at full speed, but you should be able to feel it. Squash and stretch that spans too many frames (and is too extreme) will make it look like the ball is willing itself to jump, and that's not what we want to see for this part of the assignment.


    Part 2: Bouncing Ball with Character

    Unlike Part 1 where you showed how two lifeless balls might bounce in comparison to each other based solely on physical properties, for Part 2 you will show how a "living" ball might bounce/act given an emotional state. Here's what we are looking for:


    General Animation and Maya Tips:

    Playblasting:

    Playblasts are Maya's way of creating a preview of your animation that runs in real time, and is much faster to create than a render. Go to Window > Playblast > OptionBox. Change the option for Viewer to 'Movieplayer', change the Display size to "Custom" and enter 640 and 480 for the two values. Change the scale to "1.00", and check "Save to File" and name it appropriately.

    IMPORT NOTES: The point of playblasts are to get a good preview of your animation. This means that you should hide everything that clutters the screen, and set the camera up to get a good view of your motion (you don't want the camera so far away that your bouncing ball it just a dot!) You will want to hide the heads up display information by going to Display->Heads Up Display and unchecking everything in the list. You will also want to hide all of the animation controls. Since these controls are usually NURBs curves, go to the panel menu and uncheck Show->NURBS Curves.


    Turn-in Checklist: