Even More Bouncing Ball Tests

To experiment with arcs and to get used to using references for animating, we learned how to import a movie into Maya through the image plane. This involved saving the video clip as an image sequence in Adobe After Effects, importing it into Maya, then importing it to FCheck and saving it as a .IFF sequence, then importing that sequence into Maya - a somewhat complicated process! It was a valuable lesson, however, as it helped to create a very realistic looking animation and showed us how to do rotoscoping for future work.

I used a clip of a basketball taken from a reference video I posted earlier in the blog from youtube, as I wanted to experiment with some rotation.

After importing the image sequence into Maya, I added a resolution gate and a safe action grid so I could keep my animation in frame. After this, I started the keyframing process, making a keyframe whenever the basketball hit the ground and when it was at its highest mid-bounce. Using a reference within the programme made this process far easier than usual! All I had to do was refine the bounces by adjusting the graph editor according to where the reference basketball was on screen.

Before I started rotating the ball, I added a 'ramp' texture to the sphere, adjusting the colour widths so that I could have a coloured strip going around its circumference. Then, using the rotate tool, I adjusted the dimensions to copy what the white strip was doing in the reference video.

I thought this test went quite successfully, although I would like to attempt it again using a different reference video so I can properly get the hang of rotoscoping and so I can experiment more with arcs.

I also made note of how to render through the camera view.

Here is a second test, using a different clip from the basketball reference video:

I thought this test went quite successfully as both the bounces and rotation look authentic, and adding the original audio to the clip helps make the animation look more convincing. Also, I found I could add realism by taking advantage of 3D and adjusting the z translation so that the ball wouldn't just bounce in a straight line. I do think, however, that it could be further improved by adding an element of 'Squash & Stretch'.

At this stage, I had done a lot of animating of bouncing balls, but hadn't yet tried animating a ball bouncing off a wall. My first step was finding a decent reference video off youtube, however after much searching, I couldn't find what I was looking for. So I decided I would give it a try without any reference, and film my own reference video in the morning.

Adjusting my arcs using 'ghost selected' from the animation menu.

Although it started off well, it is pretty obvious that I needed a reference! It seems as if the ball slows down as it hits the wall and when it bounces back in the opposite direction it has a sudden surge of energy, which makes it look very unrealistic.

My reference video did not go quite as planned - the framing meant that I could only see the bounce against the wall and not much else. I need to invest in a better ball if I plan on filming something like this again! 

Regardless, the reference video was still very much useable as I only wanted to do a simple test. Using FCheck, I imported the video into Maya as an image plane and began to animate. The impact of the ball bouncing off the wall was so quick that it only took a matter of frames, so it was barely worth doing the test at all! I then decided to work on changing the z translation so I could get used to adding depth. It meant that half way through the animation, the ball went through the image plane. Fortunately, Maya has a feature meaning that in perspective view you can view the image plane from the back and the film clip will still be visible.

After adjusting my arcs, I dragged all of the y-axis keyframes down so that they would bounce at the same point of contact whilst maintaining their arcs - I also set up some surroundings for the ball. Despite it being a small, simple test, I think it works quite well. If I wanted to spend extra time on it, I would have added in some rotation and continued animating until the ball came to a standstill.

This was also my first ever render on Maya - I learnt how to do this through online resources. The rendering itself was simple but time consuming - batch rendering TIFF images of every frame, then importing them as an image sequence into Adobe After Effects and exporting as a QuickTime movie. However, next time I will make sure to do a better crop and improve my framing!