Beginning back into the course, we started our practice into 3D animation with Maya. We were shown a demo of a ball bouncing, and were asked to try our hand at it. This proved very demanding, having no background experience with 3D animation it took time to get comfortable with the software, and to create animations that both looked and felt more polished.
Below is my first attempt and the bouncing ball.
Bouncing Ball: Attempt 1
It doesn't exactly behave as a bouncing ball should. The pacing needed some work, and the squash and stretch is off, these were all things I had to take into account when going forward into 3D animation.
Bouncing Ball: Experimenting with Squash and Stretch
Next I attempted to animate a ball bouncing with four different types movement. The first being a ball with heavy weight.
I feel pacing of this is much better. It feels weighty, and I took more time to place the key frames, and now that I've acquainted myself with the graph editor in Maya, I feel I was able to create a more authentic looking ball bounce than before.
Next are two more ball bounces, with varying degrees of squash and stretch incorporated. The first being somewhat bouncy, and the latter very bouncy.
Next I animated a ball bouncing up and down, but with forward movement. After taking my mistakes from the previous attempt into account I believe I ended up with a much smoother animation over all.
Bouncing Ball: Movement
Spending time on these exercises allowed me to develop my skills using the Maya software, and I feel more confident in my ability to carry these skills over into our modeling assignment, to create more aesthetically pleasing and interesting objects.
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