Bouncing Ball

[robcat2075]

My first bouncing ball for classwork at Animation Mentor, 20 years ago this week.

Now with sound effects!

The assignment was to animate a rigid bouncing ball for at least four bounces. It was OK to have it just bounce in place.

I had never really done a rigorously accurate bouncing ball before and I wanted to get this as right as I could. Looking at the time stamps of my PRJs, I see that I spent more than 30 hours on this.

 

 

[Shankill]

Jeez that looks good! Watching it frame-by-frame (pressing the '.' button)., it looks like the ball doesn't actually touch the ground on the first bounce back on the ground, not sure if I'm seeing it wrong or if that is actually how it is animated, but it really sells the 'bounciness' of the ball to where I can imagine what holding it would feel like. Well done! 

[robcat2075]

On 4/12/2025 at 1:15 PM, Shankill said:

Jeez that looks good! Watching it frame-by-frame (pressing the '.' button)., it looks like the ball doesn't actually touch the ground on the first bounce back on the ground,

I did not know you could single frame Youtube videos! That will be very useful.

You're right, it shows some space there! The ball is keyframed to contact the ground plane (see below) but... adding motion blur causes that moment of contact to be only 1/16 of the time captured in the blur as the ball heads back up.

20 years ago, motion blur wasn't an issue, we just handed in the most basic renders. I'm not sure how this problem is addressed in big-time animation studios today, however.

Thanks!