Balls falling down stairs
Using the curve editor to manually animate balls falling down stairs.
This was achieved via key framing the translation and rotation of the each ball. In this way the movement is interpolated by Maya.
One ball is bouncy whilst the other is hard.
To get the realism you need to really think about the physics involved. What happened to the ball as it falls down the stairs? How does gravity effect the bounce?
Tweaked the curves to mimic the drop off in bounce.
In this render it looks good with some simple key framing and graph editor editing. There is one glaring mistake however where the ball does not seem to reach the floor!
Picking up a ball
Creating geometry, parenting and adding constraints. Changing pivot points to ensure each body part rotates in the correct position.
Parent hierarchy is important as in determines the movement.
Constrained geo behaves realistically.
IK handles are then used to bind to the geometry. This technique in animation is used when know the final positions of your object. Animated using keyframes on the IK handles.
To pick up the ball, you can use LOC’s, and then change the parent on the frame the hand reaches the floor.
I then created another LOC and key framed it so that when the ball is thrown there it flys through the air.
Rendered!
Angle 1
“Dynamic” camera
Side by side.