This is my first take on the bootcamp exercices.
Thanks in advance for your comments on this.

Greetings
Marc[attachmentid=14045]

Alright, one question Immediately jumps out is, the bigger ball. It didnt bounce once and yet there was squish and stretch to it, if that ball squishes at all, then it will have a bounce. Second is, the smaller ball, i see that when it leaves the ground its still squished, that needs fixing as well. Plus when the smaller ball is falling it should get some stretch to it.
You did a good job on timming there though! great work.

Hi Marc, welcome aboard

I like your choice of the set, that gridlined wall in the back gives your work a unique look.

If you have Richard William's "The Animator's Survival Kit", go straight to page 94 to see how a bouncing ball is animated. If you don't have this book yet then get it A.S.A.P. It'll be the best money you ever spent.

The blue ball gets squashed before it hit the ground, that can't be because it is the ground that is the object that causes the ball to squash.

Also watch the speed at which the balls descend, they seem to be going at a constant velocity (a slow one at that). There need to be acceleration by the time they hit the ground.

Good start though

Great start!

This drawing helped me alot take a look at the splines

Thank you for all your comments guys. You have pointed out some major things.
I will continue this exercise next tuesday.
greetings to all

It depends on what the ball is made of. A ball of jello would squash alot but not bounce back into the air. A fully inflated basketball would squash hardly at all, yet bounce back up quite a bit.

There probably is no real substance that will squash and stretch and bounce the way we do classic bouncing ball. But in animation we're exxagerating the most appealing qualities of all the balls we're familiar with and combining them.

The heavy ball needn't bounce back into the air, it's too heavy for it's squetchiness to hurl it back up. My main observation about the heavy ball here is that it is unsquashing way slower than it squashed. That looks odd.

How true...

Hello everyone

I have found some time to tune my animation considering your
remarks (thank you all for this they were very helpfull)
and I notice some major improvement in the anmation.

-I have made the vertical translations splines more parabolic
to improve the acceleration.

-The red ball is unsquashing the same speed as squashing now.

-I have added stretch to the smaller ball when falling.

-Small ball is only squashed at the moment it hits the ground.

-Small ball when it leaves the ground is not squashed anymore.

What do you think ?

Greetings,

Marc[attachmentid=14059]

Much better The acceleration really helped a lot in the 'believability' department.

I have two ways of critiquing these animations, the first one is what I call "first impression" critique where I watch the movie once and for the first time and try to analyze what I saw without replay (was it believable? what looked odd etc..) Then I watch it frame by frame to see exactly where the problem is to help pinpoint the solution.

Two things truck me as odd, the red ball's abrupt stop was a bit unconvincing, I felt it needed a few more jiggles before it came to a complete stop.

The blue ball's squash was over exaggerated in its contact with the ground to the point that it was distracting and unconvincing as well. Try a 50% squash instead and a stretch in the next frame as it leaves the ground. The only time the blue ball should be in default shape is when it's up.

What Dhar said, the blue ball was over exagerated.

Much better though!

This is my new attempt to improve the animation.
-Added some jigles to the red ball when it stops.
-Made the squash lesser exaggerated on blue balls' ground contact and
stretched it in the next frames.
-added some jiggle when the blue ball stops as well.
Thank you all for your comments.

Greetings

Marc[attachmentid=14231]

Hey noewjook!

The blue ball is lookin' very good! I think the first bounce might be a bit too high relative to the successive bounces. The jiggle on the red ball is a good touch, however it if jiggles that much to expend all that energy I would expect it to bounce off the ground a little, unless you want it to be "stuck".

Great job!

-josh

Hey Noewjook,

Nice bounces, I like the jello jiggle on the red ball. The stretches on the blue ball look a little long (too many frames). On some of the bounces the ball is stretched the entire visible fall. Overall, nice work.

Bruce

Hi Noewjook,

Good job on the bounces. I have just a few comments. The blue ball seems to have nice timing, especially when bouncing off the ground. As mentioned before, it shouldn't spend so much time stretched....only a few frames before and after the bounce maybe. Also, I wouldn't have the finally small bounces go so fast. Same with the red ball. Maybe don't make the jiggle so fast. Overall, they look great!

Paula

I agree the settling jiggles on the balls are too fast. They appear uncharacteristic of the mass the balls portrayed while they were bouncing.

But i like the blue bounce. It's very lively.

Well here is a new refined version of the animation.
Here I have,

-I have made the stretches of the blue ball a bit shorter.
-Slowed down the setting jiggles of the red ball.

This is the result.[attachmentid=14488]

I have made a ball bounce following the instructions from Richard Williams'
"animator survival kit" page 96.
In the two following movies I have tried to implement the things I have trained so far.
Trying to make two balls with diffirent characteristics.[attachmentid=14489][attachmentid=14490][attachmentid=14491]

For yourt first one...im not sure what was happening there, looked like your ball would stretch, then go bak to normal...then stretch again, while it was in middair, thats all for that one. The "test2" the yellow ball needs more bounces to it.
Test3 the red ball seems to be falling way to fast at the end there, i see no decrease in speed when its falling, its only like 3 frames and 2 of the frames the ball is like right next to the first. It looks pretty good if i dont disect it frame by frame though.

1st looks good ther is only a problem with the stretch on the down it stretches goes round mid air then stretches simple to fix

2nd is nice although In the surval kit Richard talks about having a contact point the is stretched when hitting the ground then squashing in the next frame then air bound strethed in next frame. Just a note not saying that this is wrong.

3rd one I see you did the countact the way richard recomends in this one very nice I say you are ready for the next exe.

I have made a jumping ball with some rotation on it following frank silas' tutorial.[attachmentid=14767]

Try giving the ball a few more bounces, i also noticed that it would jump into a stretch instead of flowing into it. I like the way the camera moved along with it. Nice job!

that's a good jumping ball. Maybe a little too jumpy. It it were intended to be a bouncing ball i'd say it's racing up too fast, hanging too long, and racing back down too fast. But for a jumping ball... I'll buy it... still a bit too fast on the up and down for my taste, it has the look of being slapped down in mid air by some invisible hand.

The squash and stretch is handled well. You do want go directly from the squash to the stretch on the rebound.

the paths are good parabolas. Except for the first fall into frame; that's very flat and linear and looks like it's floating down.

Good work!

Nice work Marc. If this was one shot in a series of scenes I'd probably wouldn't notice anything wrong.

This is my first attempt to make a jumping sack following frank silas' tutorial nr.2[attachmentid=14798]

This is slightly better version.
I have rendered it in shadow mode because that way the jump is more viewable by the shadow and it is
a lot nicer anyhow.
And I have added some simple interaction with the white ball.[attachmentid=14800]

i love it!

Nice textures & colors Marc. Mignon.

I'm not sure I understand the sack's movements/reactions, especially as the ball comes back to it.

I see you have some anticipation before the jump, it needs lot more exaggeration. This is not a ball that can squish and jump because it has a far more complex body. Treat it like a human body; anticipation leaning back, then wind up where it leans forward (bowing), then jump (about 30 times higher) while twisting the top to its left and the bottom half following. And remember you arc You also put in follow thru after the jump, which is very good, just give it more, exaggerate.

I don't understand that forward leaning as the ball returns maybe you can shed some light as to what it is you're trying to convey.

Thank you Robert, dhar and Robcat for your comments on the jumping ball.
I have sharpened the parobolic curves a bit to slow down the racing up and racing down and to shorten the hanging of the ball.
On frame 2 I have added a keyframe and then it was possible to make the first fall down curve more
parabolic.I did that because it did not work on the first frame.[attachmentid=14801][attachmentid=14802]

Alot better! i like it!

I would agree, the arcs are MUCH better... looks great!

Take a close look at that screen capture of the channels and we can see why we're not getting real parabolas in the flight path.

the curve is actually flattening out as it approaches the ground. It's taking on a bell shape. thatmeans the ball is slowing down before it hits the ground and accellerating after it jumps. Both not possible.

a real parabola approaches horizontal only at the center. the sides only get steeper and steeper as they fall away. They never try to level out again.

What you do is peak those splines and adjust the handles to get a real parabolic curve.

You're real close, and the speed of the bouncing means that only a few frames are affected, but for slower bounces you'd definitely have to break and adjust those curve shapes very carefully.

you can see an example of that in the sample bounce project

This is another attempt for the sack animation.Difficult
I am first going to concentrate me on a jump now
Thanks for all your comments on the jumping ball animation.I'll continue that on sunday.[attachmentid=14806]

I faced a similar situation with the juice box exercise http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18796&st=30.

My problem was I kept forgetting to exaggerate. If in real life you only jump 6 inches, animate the jump to be 3 feet! (as an example) to make it look believable/noticeble. Also, before you commit to final render, try to "feel" if your jump is believable.

I know facing difficulties is no fun, but once you overcome it, the feeling is.......fantastique

here is a new sack animation.[attachmentid=14906]

hahaha LOL That was way funny. That is one sackful of energy.

Just wondering; is this pretty close to how you wanted it?

Nearly.I wanted him to look up when the traffic light on his right jumps to green and then he is crossing the road.

I have made a new sack animation.First I played the action I wanted on the kitchentable with a small box, and taped that on the video.So I had a better idea of the timing I wanted.I have made the actions a bit slower and put some time space between the jumps (following the vedeotape I have made).
This is the result.[attachmentid=14940]

I thinkyou need to have a bit more mass in the sack. It seems to spring in the air without reference to gravity. Nice start though.

Chris

Ty chris.This is my latest version of the jumping sack where I have done several changes including giving the sack a bit more mass by slowing down the animation on the jumps and accentuating the squash.[attachmentid=15219]

Your welcome, noewjook.
Try and render the shadows too- it helps you to read the action.
This is looking much better, but for me there are still some things you could change.
You could have the sack spend longer in the normal position. Try using the wind up pose just before he launches into a jump, rather than holding it for so long before.
Try getting in some changes of the line of action as well. He's leaning back on frame 1, try reversing the curve for the windup on 130, then curving forward to 137.
At the top of the arc, the sack stays at the same height from 136 to 139-you could adjust this with the bias jandles for the y axis curve.
He leans back nicely in the descent, but then does a near vertical straightning at 150 as though all forward momentum is arrested. The return from squashed could use a little forward omentum as well.
Frame 184 sees him sliding back on the ground. try to correct the spline drift . The next jump is better, but he still stays at ther same height over 137 to 139. This is'nt the same as hanging at the top of the arc- even if you slow the timing up here those three frames should still be an arc.
The return journey is much better, I really like that sort of double bounce with the squash- it adds a real feeling of weight. If you could use that on the first part I think it would pull everything together.

Anyway excuse my rambling- It does me good to crit work, and helps me improve too.
Keep it up!
Chris

This is very close,

I notice the first jump looks more natural than the second.

That's because the first one goes squash, stretch (still touching the ground), stretched into the air

but the second one skips that middle phase. It makes him look like he was pulled into the air rather having jumped.

There also seems to be some jitter in the arcs, he's not quite making a smooth path through the air.