Here is my ping pong ball
@500 fps
BM
BM
@pappy, the ball touch down should take only one frame. You don’t seem to be using the IPO curve editor. The ball seems to be jumping from position to position and not following nice arcs.
@Orinoco. The ball bounces feel right except that the last bounces seem to stop too short. Like if the ball become heavier at the end.
@bjornmose, Thanks for this video. It help answer a lot of questions. Magnificent realistic render BTW 
@koots2: Sorry about that, I meant Ive got a thread in the Animation forum with various little tests Ive been doing.
@ypoissant: Critique taken, thanks for the tip!
Alright, Ive been tweaking that ball, I feel like the speed arc is a bit better now… Maybe not?
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/96/Animation%20Practice/Ball%20Bounce%20V2.mov
Later
So here is my revised light (ping-pong) ball bounce.
This one is physically accurate as good as I can given that I cheated so the floor hits match the frames and given that I drew a template on an overhead transparency sheet that I taped on my monitor and visually matched the IPO curves to it.
Being that we don’t have actual mentors to see the troubled spots and guide us, I decided that this would be the next best thing. I learned a ton by doing that and now I can try different timing tweaks to see what effect it have on the “emotions” of the ball.
I have a question. Are we suppose to be considering the drop from the ramp as straight down or looking at it as putting some forward momentum to it?
I have been doing some tests with actual physical objects and the results are quite different with just a little difference in forward velocity.
Like with the heavy cannon type ball if you drop straight down almost no forward movement but just the slightest ramp and it rolls for a very long time.
Thanks,
Joe
@free_ality, The ball is stomping. The fall is looking fine. It is the rise that is off. It looks like it is accelerating in mid air. Its maximum rising velocity is when it leaves the floor and then it decelerates contimuously until it reaches the top of its motion.
@technojoe, That is a good question. Just droping the ball and make it bounce makes the animation task easier. Maybe for learning purpose, one could start that way. Adding the forward motion makes the animation slightly more difficult. That could be considered as the next step in the learning process.
As for how long the ball keeps on rolling, I’ve been thinking about that issue. I think it depends on the roughness of the ball and the floor surfaces more than anything else. So in an animation, the length of the roll would convey some “feelings” about the surface properties. If a canon ball was dropped on a dirt ground, for instance, it would very probably not roll for very long, I would guess it would stop quite quickly. This would be a visual cue as to the heaviness of the ball and how much the floor “gives”. All “feeling” stuffs that must be considered when animating.
I see you are using favors for your ping pong ball, which is nice. That snappy motion gives the animation a cartoon like feeling.
Thanks, I was just wondering because pretty much all of our videos so far have been with some forward velocity.
I agree that the type of surface that the ball lands on has a lot to do with how far the ball roles. Also, I it has to do with how far it bounces also. Like dropping a tennis ball on cement or hard wood floor vs. on grass or carpet.
Then another factor is the ball itself. The weight has a lot to do with it, but the springyness (lacking a better term) and other factors have a lot to do with how it bounces and how it roles also.
Just thinking,
Joe
OK, here are two test vids I made for a heavy type ball maybe an analog to a cannon ball. Probably not for a bowling ball though. Please, ignore the extreme slant of my floor toward the camera.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-582436135808968503
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6599107270313343067
I am still working on one for the ping pong ball. I have a paddle but no balls, I normally use the ones at school. I will try to get some today. Maybe a tennis ball also.
I hope this contributes something,
Joe
Thanks Joe, this helps satisfy my curiosity about differences between physical reality, and effective animation. What kind of balls are they?
JF
In both vids they are the same ball. It is a tennis ball sized piece of rock or something. Very hard and heavy for its size, something like a cannon ball I would envision.
Joe
Cool, not very bouncy stuff.
JF
technojoe,
Nice, so it looks like in my animation I should be bouncing less than I had for the Bowling ball. I can’t wait to see you bounce a ping pong ball.
Who was working on the wiki page? What’s the plan for setting something like that up.
Does anyone who has come up with a believable ping pong ball feel like doing a video tut?
Here is my revised heavy bouncing ball. I took from my learned experience with the physically accurate light ball for this one.
Here is my updated Cannon ball.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7370775467446763730&hl=en
Joe
My edit of my first one:
http://www.youtube.com/v/clHGwjWzJFk
I am starting to be impressed by the chosen methods to this “Class”. The isolation of specific skills for the beginner is really helped out by the standard file approach. Thanks for the IPO tips Joe. For me that is the first of other real basic things I am going to have to learn about in order to keep up with most of you folks.
JF
Jcode,
A nice improvment over your last animation. The ball still seems like it needs some work, mainly on the down. I think the ball needs to make more of an arc.
What I do is block out the animation first, i.e. the ball on the first fall, then a key frame at the end of the first platform. Once I am happy with the speed in which the ball gets from one side to the other I start making the bounces. This way you only have to worry about one thing at a time. I think you will get a much smoother ball movement is you try it this way. Does everyone else do it like this?
So far, I keyframed all the tops and bottoms of the bounces then i go into the IPO and smooth and tweak. I just kind of guessed on how many bounces it would take.
Joe