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  • Software:Blender 2.78  ·
  • Difficulty:Intermediate

Rules of the Exercise

  • 1
    Animation is appealing and makes the ball act like a living, breathing character rather than just a ball.
  • 2
    Submission is in video format.
  • 3
    Uses the .blend file provided.

A ball becomes a character

OVERVIEW

This exercise is designed to be an application of the information learned in Chapter 4 of the Animation Bootcamp course. The assignment is to breath life into a ball through animation. More than mere physical behavior, you're to give the ball a will; a mind. Animate the ball approaching the platform, move across it in a series of jumps, peer over the edge, and finally decide to jump off to land on the ground. exercise_09_character-ball_example

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Download the Character Ball: Source Files from the Downloads tab and open the unzipped .blend file with Blender.
  2. Animate the ball as a character traversing the platform like it has a will, is capable of analyzing its surroundings, and makes decisions  - Like you see in the example above. Have fun with this. At least mimic what you see in the example. But also consider making your ball character do a unique action that still gives the illusion of life.
  3. Render your animation as an openGL viewport render.
  4. Upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo.
  5. Finally, submit your exercise by clicking the Submit Exercise button in the top-right corner of this page and pasting your video's URL.