Vanilla Ball Bounce

This Exercise is part of the course: Blender Animation Bootcamp

Part of the Learning Flow:

Animation in Blender

Chapter 1: Developing Your Eye
Learning to animate is learning to see.
Chapter 2: Everything is a Bouncing Ball
Complex animation is a collection of its simple animations. And those simple animations can almost always be analyzed as bouncing balls.
Chapter 3: More Ball Animation Goodness
Not so fast - I'm not done teaching you everything there is learn from bouncing balls!
Chapter 4: Let's not forget Squash & Stretch
This is the last chapter focusing on ball animation. Who knew there was so much to learn from balls?
Chapter 5: Into the Character Realm
We're diving into characters at this point. In this chapter, we cover one more animation principle and introduce you to the VonnBots!
Chapter 6: Can you walk the walk?
Summon all your animation skills to create believable and appealing walk cycles for the Stomp and Rivet VonnBots.
Chapter 7: In Closing
Congrats on finishing the course! If you're wondering where to go from here, this video from Wayne answers that question.
- What Next? 2 min

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Software: Blender 2.78
Difficulty:

Everybody starts with a bounce.

OVERVIEW

This exercise is designed to be an application of the information learned in Chapter 2 of the Animation Bootcamp course. The assignment is to animate a simple ball bounce - "simple" meaning there's no squash or stretch and the motion is restricted to the Z-axis (up and down). This application will nail down the animation principle of slow-in and slow out.

INSTRUCTIONS

Download the Vanilla Ball Bounce: Source Files from the Downloads tab. Unzip and open the included .blend file with Blender.
Using only 3 keyframes and their f-curves, animate the ball bouncing up and down in a perpetual cycle.
Render your animation as an openGL viewport render loop. "Loop" means that the animation ends exactly how it begins so it can play seamlessly forever.
Loop your animation 5 times and export as a video file.
Upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo.
Finally, submit your exercise by clicking the Submit Exercise button in the top-right corner of this page and pasting your video's URL.

Rules of the Exercise

1

Only 3 keyframes are used.
2

Submission video contains 5 loops of the animation.
3

Animation is believable as a bounce.

t

File starts up with basketball, when i change it to blue paintball, it switches back to baskett ball when frame changes. How can i keep it on paintball?

1 answer · asked April 13, 2018 1:12pm

t

tonycam123
1 answer · asked April 13, 2018 1:12pm

File starts up with basketball, when i change it to blue paintball, it switches back to baskett ball when frame changes. How can i keep it on paintball?

1 Answer
z

Is there a way to submit this exercise more then once?

2 answers · asked March 27, 2018 12:25am

z

Zach Zellman
2 answers · asked March 27, 2018 12:25am

Is there a way to submit this exercise more then once?

2 Answers
why doesn't the frame counter work?

4 answers · asked August 26, 2017 8:20pm

vonzaku
4 answers · asked August 26, 2017 8:20pm

why doesn't the frame counter work?

4 Answers
Differing goals of animation

2 answers · asked January 3, 2018 2:42pm

techworker1
2 answers · asked January 3, 2018 2:42pm

Differing goals of animation

"Believable" vs. "accurate" vs. "appealing" animation - they all seem somewhat different. "Best" one depends on the situation?
I can imagine a beach ball as a "passive object". Physical laws are followed pretty strictly. Maybe a little exaggeration for effect. Anticipation would probably be an error.
I can imagine a beach ball as a "character". We pretend it has muscles and intelligence. Physical laws are followed loosely, violated freely. Anticipation would probably be desirable.
[Maybe a long question for a simple concept. But it seems fundamental.]

2 Answers
c

OpenGL fps is higher

1 answer · asked December 4, 2017 5:27pm @ video mark 10:23

c

Fabrizzio Caron
1 answer · asked December 4, 2017 5:27pm @ video mark 10:23

OpenGL fps is higher

Hi Wayne,

I have a small problem. When I use the OpenGL render option, my animation seems faster (looks like 60 fps to me) and I can't change it to match my animation seen without OpenGL (running at 24 fps). And when I change the fps in the "dimensions" section, the OpenGL render remains unchanged (still at 60 fps). There's any solution to this?

Thank you!

1 Answer

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Wayne Dixon

Level 8

Rank: 6

Since 2009, I have been producing high quality character animations for everything from commercials to children's music videos. Working remotely for several small studios, I have been responsible for the rigging and animation of several videos that have received over 100 million views on Youtube. (Making for some very happy clients.)