Bouncing ball animation

                                                        

This is my first 3d animation. I had really enjoyed doing the bouncing ball animation in 2d using flash. I felt like a little kid on a sugar high while drawing the keyframes and inbetweens and watching them play out in the final animation.
    

The first step in creating the animation was obviously studying it through a reference. So here is my reference video below

Then i drew some rough thumbnails by studying the movement of the ball to better understand how the ball bounced and how to reproduce the bounce in my animation.

While creating the animation in maya, the thing which confused me was the graph editor.But with practice i was able to make out what to control as to get the desired output.

Thanks and comments are welcome and appreciated.

                         

Elephant Toy

                                                                        Wheel Rig
        
               The task was to rig the wheels of the elephant toy to turn when the model was moved.
                                                              
                                                                      State of rest

                                    

                                                                      Stretched position

 

                                                                   Squashed position

For this rig to work, an expression was required. Therefore a formula was used to make the wheels turn when the model was moved.

An auto wheel attribute was added to the master control of the model to control the on and off of the wheel movement.

Individual controls for each of the four wheels were created for individual movement.

Then a squash deformer was added to the model for the stretch and squash feature to get a  cartoonic  appeal.

The whole model was then parent and scale constrained to the master control.

           

Classic Warfare

                                                Rigging a Classic Bow and Arrow mechanism

 The task was to rig the bow and arrow according to the rig requirements. The requirements were
 1. The bow had to bend when the strings were pulled
 2.The Arrow had to have a space to function independently, stay with the bow and stay with the string
 3.A world control was necessary for the model
  Here are some of the screenshots below-

 

The Bow was rigged first. Then the components of the bow rig were grouped together and a master control was created for the Bow rig group, and the bow group was parent and scale constrained to the Bow master control.

the Arrow group containing the parts of the arrow were grouped three times to create a spin, adjustment and transform group for the arrow to be rigged convincingly. The  Arrow control was created and the spin, adjustment and space switch attributes were added to the control.

The space switch  attribute was necessary to enable the Arrow to move freely with  the Bow and the string.

Bow and Arrow animation