Bouncing balls

We have been doing more animation in Maya, this time exploring gravity, and how to animate objects to make it seem realistically effected by it.

We practices with a ball and how it would bounce when hitting the floor. A ball wouldn't simply drop to the ground at the same speed and instantly stop, so we made it build up speed and bounce off the floor. Similarly, it wouldn't start slow when going back up, so we altered the graphs to make sure it kept it's speed when bouncing, slowing down when it reached its height. We made the ball bounce lower and lower to reflect how it would look in real life.

We also looked into how the weight of a ball might effect how it animates. The ball on the left is very heavy, while the ball on the right is very light. The heavy ball drops faster than the lighter ball, and only bounces a small amount. The lighter ball takes longer to reach the ground and bounces a lot more.

I will have to remember to utilise gravity and weight when making my animation so the movement don't seem awkward or fake.