itsjustme

Looks great so far, Lloyd!

The rig I'm using has similar capabilities, but you may have something in there that would be better...I'll take a look at it. Thanks, Jody! David: Please do not think I was critiquing your squetching at all! I like, prefer TOON, interpretive animation with squishy, squash. I like your animation in all it's imaginative glory. But if one is going for realism, my point is that there is basically NO (to minimal) stretching at all on any ball, no matter what it is made of, as it nears the ground. And if it's barely inflated, it won't bounce much either. It will deform on the bottom when it hits the ground. I only posted that silly image with my overly squetched caption to serve as an illustration that stretch & squash especially of a ball is toon behavior and can not be accurately explained in terms of real world physics. But some people like to use imaginative analogies to explain the behavior. I could have said tennis ball/ping pong ball/ eye ball turns into bean bag as it gets closer to the ground. Real world captures of bouncing balls are shown in this post. Theres no stretch and there's no noticeable squash (need to be closer up). Pity tho. Reality sucks. Sorry for the misunderstanding, Nancy...I was just making clear that the last animation was of something other than a bowling ball. I know that squetch is an animation contrivance to give both a smear/blur frame (which would show up on film depending on the camera shutter speed) and a feeling of weight and does not accurately reflect reality. I'll have to go back and read some of the discussion that I missed.

I did overdo the squetch on that last ball. I was thinking sort of like a barely inflated exercise ball with a lot of "give" to it. The problem in the frame that had the extreme difference in stretch/height was caused by my incorrect adjustment of the movement of the pivot (and not thinking about the top of the ball)...which makes the ball move higher when moved from the bottom of the ball to the center. I'm hoping to get back to this sometime this weekend to make a corrected version. ---------------------- EDIT ---------------------- I just noticed the caption on Nancy's image...it was an exercise ball (in my mind barely inflated), not a bowling ball that is shown.

Happy Birthday, Mark!

Treepad Lite (freeware) is like virtual index cards...there are also paid versions with more bells and whistles. I've used it occasionally. Hope that helps.

Great stuff, John!

I'll keep it quiet, I'd hate to be the one to ruin things....so I'll whisper. happy birthday, matt.

Anyone know why the bones don't stay in place after keys with constraint results were forced on them? I ought to be able to turn the constraint off after that and have them remain in place. (post #27) Could you post the model, Robert?

Makes perfect sense, Robert...several things I didn't take into account. Thanks for taking a look at it. I'll post an updated version in the next few days.

Whoooops! Thanks for that info, MT! I changed it. Credit where credit is due. Which is Jim Talbot's handle here (JTalbotski).

Happy Birthday, Kat!

"Dagooos"

Happy Birthday, David!

Here's the 04 exercise...an exercise ball with additional contact frames (24 frames per second). Included in the ZIP are the Choreographies, model used (with material), stills, renders and notes. bouncing_ball_exercises_04_with_notes.zip

I just posted another ball bounce exercise here. I'll spend a little time working on the generic guy's modeling and kick out another ball bounce exercise this next week. I've also got a tweak to add to the Squetch Rig along the way...I'm squeezing it in before I stick with my "feature freeze" on it.

Here's the updated version of the 03 exercise with corrected bounciness on everything. I also reduced the squetch a little on the tennis ball, added some links and explanation to the notes and a final render (it could have been higher quality, but I decided to tweak it a little to get a faster render). bouncing_ball_exercises_03_update_with_notes.zip

I'm not familiar with Jack L. Chalker...but a search turned up "Well World" as a possibility. I was more of an Asimov/Zelazny/Heinlein/Donaldson/Niven/Herbert reader in my youth.

Looks great so far, Jost!

Wellsir, I think I misunderstood the chart...that'll teach me to assume I know what I'm looking at. It appears to have been the "coefficient of restitution" (speed up / speed down) and not the height of the bounce that it compares. Yeah, I'm feeling bone-headed at the moment. First, I did a very rough check of two ping-pong ball bounce videos on Youtube. I approximated as about a 72% bounce using the second drop. Then, gave me a rough estimate of 83%. I thought about just averaging those two numbers and make it 77.5%, but the angle of the camera and the interlacing of the video both made some of my figuring suspect. I looked around a little more and found this page which states: So, 23/30...which would be 76% of the drop height for the ping-pong ball. This page has also has the bounce heights for a golf ball (73.6%) and tennis ball (50.6%). I'll do a little more research tomorrow and correct all of the ball bounces. Thanks for catching that, Robert!

He may be...I'm pretty sure he actually bounces a baseball on that page (unless I'm not remembering correctly), but he didn't actually show the others. There is bound to be some more examples on Youtube...I'll take a look late tonight.

Very cool. I thought I might have gone a little much on the squetch of the tennis ball. I had my doubts as well. However, since I've never actually tested it I figured whoever put together that chart I used would know better than me. It wouldn't be the first surprising thing for me to find out. I'll have to double-check that info...it also wouldn't be the first error I've found in reference material if it turns out to be incorrect.

Okay, I managed to get back to this...balls with different levels of bounciness. I'll put together the one for the ball that takes more contact frames next. Included in the ZIP are the models used, Choreographies, renders (24 frames per second) and notes. I didn't get a chance to render a final render, but if I made mistakes that need correcting, I'll add it for the update. bouncing_ball_exercises_03_with_notes.zip

How do I put this...INCREDIBLE! Great stuff, Mark!

LOL! Looks great!

Nice!