I’ve just written a new tutorial: An introduction to the bouncing ball using Blender.
The tutorial assumes basic Blender knowledge, some knowledge of Lattices (though most people will cope even if they’ve never used Lattices before) and a little IPO knowledge (again, most people will cope anyway).
I’ll await feedback before progressing to the next stage - The bouncing ball - advanced principles. Let me know if I’ve got all the info required - or if anything makes no sense at all.
The tutorial does not introduce any unknown Blender features. Everything discussed is well documented elsewhere so please, before asking basic Blender questions, do a little searching for the right answers.
Notes regarding tutorial:
One major issue you may come across is that the Lattice Deform Modifier does not appear to work in some Blenders. For this reason, I recommend parenting the sphere to the lattice then in the modifier panel press “make real”. This should result in a working lattice. This is mentioned in the tutorial.
AndyD, great intro to lattice animations, just one minor problem. The ball is deforming as it falls to meet the ground. The squash shouldn’t start until the ball touches the ground and should be very abrupt. The unsquashing can take some time, as the ball regains it shape on the way to the top of the cycle. Right now it sort of looks like the ball is stretching out to meet the ground as it falls.
In this tutorial, you shouldn’t get deformation on the fall since the lattice is keyed undeformed at frame 11 and fully squashed on 12. It should then undeform on 13 before rising. If you change the key spacing (for a slower animation) then you may need to edit the curves directly to control the ease-in and ease-out values.
If you’re referring to the animation, then I can only say that in cartoon animation (Preston Blair standard), the stretch usually does occur in the falling part of the motion. Squash starts upon contact with the ground and then the ball stretches again as the stored energy takes over forcing the ball to rise, regaining normal, or even slightly squashed, shape at the highest point as the elasticity of the ball corrects the stretch.
I’d planned to cover these things in part 2 but I wanted to see what came out of the new documentation project before getting too involved.
If you seriously want information then you’ll get more help if you don’t spam the forums. If it’s not about Blender then post once in the off-topic or other-software forum. If it’s a Blender game, post once in the game forum.
Since it has nothing to to do with this bouncing ball tutorial - or ANY tutorial - or anything else to do with using Blender, don’t post this question here or in any other general support forum. And don’t post the same or similar question in more than one place in these forums. Too late now but don’t do it again.