3D Animated Bouncy Ball

For the next part of this unit, I had to make a 3D animated bouncing ball within the software 'Maya'. This task felt daunting at first simply for the fact I had never used Maya before. Thankfully, with the help of the tutor and some production notes, I believe I was able to follow through the software at a good pace. I learnt a great deal of importance with the graphs and the numeric side of the software. These elements are all vital for accuracies and where to pinpoint animation locations, so i had to pay strict attention to them. I often found myself forgetting to add in details and parts of my animation began to take on unrealistic characteristics.

I really enjoyed plotting and playing about with the curves in the graph system. Using the graphs helped me gain more realism within the ball's speed which helped give the animation more visual depth and appeal. Another structure was adding numeric values to my object, as this change the shape and volume of the ball, which really helped in give my animation that 'squash and stretch' principle. What i found more crucial however, was the importance of making 'keyframes' as slightly different with 2D animation in Photoshop, not making key frames in Maya really affects the outlook of the object you are animating. Forgetting to add key frames in important animated sequences in which i discovered (by forgetfulness) made the ball stay in one shape throughout. Making different key frames, pinpoints the impact of force and gravity. However, i found it far more easier within Maya, as making the key frames is fairly straight forward, the rest of the animation is done for you. All I had to do was pad it out with playing with the graphs and adjusting the numbers in the statistics of the object.

Overall I really enjoyed playing with new software, and i felt i did okay considering it was a first try. I found it far easier to animate on Maya than with 2D on Photoshop, as with that software it felt more about traditional 'flipnote' production, and took the majority of animating time, plotting and correct speed paths. I think my animation as whole is good, the only thing I believe looks wrong in my production, is that on impact the ball seems to squash a bit too much. However, I believe I can honestly say it was a simple mistake, as when rendering the images on Photoshop into a video, I took the images of my animation from a higher angle of the action. That's why i think you cannot see the ball's true form with that impact in the animation, as in the initial Maya sequence, the flattening of that force is less dramatic.

Here is my animation:

Software used: Maya, Photoshop CS5, Quicktime