Okay, if I grasped the concept right, basically you follow the list of excercises to get the hang of/improve/experiment with animation skills... then you post the results for people to rip to shre-.. evaluate... right?

If so.. *wipes sweat of brow* here's my rendition of... *drumroll*

A ball bouncing in place.

[attachmentid=14772]

First off, I'd get rid of the motion blur, it makes it look like your ball is loosing it's grip on this dimension at the bottom of the bounce.

Other than that, I'd say it's a very solid start. The timing on the bounce seems about right as well as your squetch.

Remove that motion blur and then we can better rip to shre-.. evealuate it for you.

Yah, what Jody said. My shredder doesn't work on blur

Whoops, didn't even think about the bluriness. So here's a "crisp as iceberg lettuce" version.

[attachmentid=14808]

Great job. just on little thing that will help it look a little better is, Have the ball contact the ground while its still in a stretch.

Also, as the ball leaves the ground it should be stretched again. Currently the first frame after it leaves the ground it's still squished. That's probably what was causing your motion blur to make it appear to 'dimension shift'.

The order (that I've been told) that is correct, is one frame with it touching the ground stretched, the next frame with it squished on the ground and the next frame with it just off the ground stretched again.

Other than that, it looks excellent!

Time to make salad!
I think its nearly there. But.......

For me,
The amount of squetch in 3 frames is very high, the large distortion implying a greater speed, yet the actual bounce is quit slow, implying low gravity or light weight as the ball hangs at the top of the arc. I think the bounce needs to speed up a little,the squetch be a bit lessand if you play around with the translate curve on the Y axis the whole thing would be spot on.
Anyway thats how I see it

Chris

Looks Great!

The only thing that stands out for me is that it's a little too 'snappy' on the way down. Try and make the motion a little more gradual on the way down, it's somewhat delayed now. This causes it to look like it's working against gravity rather than with it. But that's a fine lookin' bounce!

Welcome to the Students Forum!

Sorry for the wait. Got sidetracked... here once again.. is a ball bouncing in place... [attachmentid=14909]

Good arcs, nice timing.

There is a jelly feeling to the ball, I don't know if it was intentional. The ball needs to touch the ground while stretched, then squished while still on the ground, then leaves the ground stretched in the next frame, then goes to its default shape at its highest point in the air.

I think wat the problem is....the ball streatches but doesent leave the ground..it needs to be switched around...THe ball needs to contact the ground while in stratch, but it shouldnt still be attached to the ground when it stretches going up.

I think I finally got it, it looks pretty awesome now (in my own humble opinion). Yeah, I was having all these problems with the squetching due to the fact I'm usually animating things like robots, so machines don't really have much of a need to squetch around.



[attachmentid=14930]

Overall it looks great! Only thing left to fix is the stretch upon leaving the ground. Currently you don't have any stretch on the first frame leaving the ground and it takes about 3 frames to get it. So it looks like the ball is lacking energy leaving the ground.

Great improvements! Keep going.

Looks good overall, Howevver..the ball needs to contact the ground while in a stretch, then squish then leave the ground in a stretch.

Jody (& Micah) nailed it. The ball is squishing before it hit the ground and still stretching as it leaves the ground. To correct this; the ball needs to be at its maximum stretch when it touches the ground - next frame squished - next frame maximum stretch & just off the ground. Only two frames touching the ground, a stretch & a squish.

The few frames around the bounce are working against you. The ball is actually losing its stretch before it hits and leaving the ground in an unstretched shape. That's making the landings seem very soft.

the ball should be at its most stretched (and touching the ground) on the frame before the squash and should be back to fully stretched on its first frame off the ground.

I decided to change my lighting... again (so what if I'm a perfectionist? j/k). I decided to ditch the fancyness, and just stick with 1 simple bulb light, and around 15% global ambience. Not that this has any relevance to anything.

.. Oh yeah! I changed the animation too:

[attachmentid=15046]

Very nice... I think you nailed it... I especially like the 'jello' wiggle on the squetch as it goes up... nice touch.

Yup, you nailed it.

Personally I think you could cut down on the jiggle, but that's just my preference.

Whoo! Bouncing balls!

Here we have 2 balls of different weights bouncing across the screen (but stopping before they go out of the frame). I think the bouncing in place excersise helped out alot, because this clip already looks pretty good to me (in my humble "openeeown"), and this was only my first try at the thing.

[attachmentid=15073]

I like the arcs and the speed at which the balls move. I too just did this exercise. Rob posted some comments in my thread regarding things that I should fix. It looks like you have the same thing going on. When the balls stretch, they are only stretching up and down and not in the direction of the arc. If you want to check out what Rob had to say about mine I am including the link. I really the weights that you gave the balls. I get the impression of those new jello commericals when I looked at yours.

Link to my thread with Rob's comments.
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20391&st=30

Overall though, your are right, they do look good and you definitely did better than I did. It took me several tries to get where I am now with mine.

Leo

When I saw this exercise I thought "Wow!" but after I watched it a few more times somethin seemed wrong.

For me there is a problem with the weight and stretch. Take the blue ball----
You've put in a lot of effort to portray the weight and arc( leaving aside the angle of the stretch ) and on the surface it all looks really good.
But if you think about it that ball is showing incredible deformation right to the end of the action.
So for me, it seems to be filled with liquid sloshing around right to the end, in which case the bounce should tail off a lot sooner as its very heavy.
Or maybe its not filled with liquid, in wich case I would expect the squetch would have tailed off a lot sooner as it nears the end of its bounce and looses energy.

Please feel free to ignore my comments - its just the way I see it

Chris