The energy picks up as the ball rolls off the ledge, it further picks up as it falls from the ledge to the floor. Its energy slowly is lost as it moves forward, the energy then bounces off the wall and continues to travel until it is all gone. And of course the energy of each bounce slowly is lost as well.
Helpful Hints.
I have attached 3 sample files that show the workflow I chose to use for this particular assignment.
Notice first I work out the timing of the ball progressing forward. I have attatched an image of how I did this in the graph.
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| Translations |
Then I work out the bounces. I actually chose to mute the translation forward after I animated and just focus on each bounce as seemed appropriate.
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| Ups and downs |
I then unmuted the forward progression and polished it as it seemed appropriate again. I personally find working this way is pretty fast, and allows for a really nice smooth animation.
This example took about 10 minutes to animate. Since it is such a simple assignment, why not challenge yourself! To confirm the rules, the ball must roll a high ledge, bounce off a wall, and have come to a settle. However you could do a few different balls. Heavy balls, light balls, bowling balls, ping pongs, basketballs, tennis balls etc. Take it a step further, add some subtle squash and stretch. Add some rotations. Experiment with the layout. Most importantly learn from this exercise!
For those of you that dont like working in the graph editor and using motion trails, why not implement that into this challenge?
Have fun and happy animating!
challenge written by Matthew Finch
