Balls

Video and Math

The first thing we did for this project was create videos to base our animations on. We went to the loading dock of the school and we brought a tennis ball, bowling ball, and a golfball with us. We chose three people to drop the balls and we filmed them dropping the balls. Then we came back to the room and uploaded them to our computers. Then we put the videos into photoshop and marked all the frames where the ball reached its height in the bounce. Once we figured out where the ball reached its maximum height per bounce we figured out the height of the ball in an excel sheet. 

Maya

First thing we did was create each of our spheres. I made three spheres all similar to the sizes of a tennis ball, bowling ball, and golf ball. I found a golfball bump map on the internet and I applied it to my golf ball to make it look like a golf ball. I then found a tennis ball texture via google and I put that on my tennis ball but not as a bump map because it looked too weird as a bump map. So I just put it in as a texture. I made the bowling ball by taking three cylinders and using Booleans and difference to make the Holes for your hands. Then I added a marble texture to it.

Animating

After I finished creating all of my balls then it was time to animate. In order to animate I took the frames and the heights of each ball and input it as a keyframe in Maya. Having the excel sheet really helped when it came to making realistic bounces. Once all the key frames were in place I put the frames on easy ease and edited it in the graph editor. Once I did that the balls looked realistic ish when they're bouncing. Then added a grocery store background and tried to adjust my lights to look like a grocery store. I liked this project a lot Think it was really fun. I just wish my Animation looked more realistic.