Blender Underground

Hi all.

I wan't to learn animation, and apparantly the best way to start is to animate a bouncing ball.

So i made a 'ball rig' for this purpose, and thought i'd share it with you guys .
I wrote some info about it in a PDF you can download aswell. Shouldn't be too complicated, though.

Link to the rig:
http://www.mediafire.com/?63o6n768gkmv11j
link to the PDF:
http://www.mediafire.com/?nzyladk33cz13cg

And here's a link to a bouncing ball
http://picasaweb.google.dk/lh/photo/k8K ... directlink

EDIT: It's an animated GIf but for some reason it's slow motion on Picassa.

Any C&C is welcome, but i'm not always able to respond as quickly as i would like to.

Regards
Gnuren

wonderful, you should UV map an image of your face to the ball!

Hi Gnuren, it's been a while.

I do like it but it doesn't seem to be deforming like a ball. It's more like a water bomb.

Thx for your comments!

@Walshlg: I like the idea of UV mapping an image on to the ball, but i promise it won't be my face
@Goliath: Yes, far too long. Hope to find more time for Blenderunderground and Blender in general.
@DaveC: Glad you like it. You are absolutely right about the deformation. The easiest way to fix this would be to rename the rig to 'Water bomb rig' .
I need to get a better understanding of lattice based deformation. If i do i will update the rig.

Gnuren

The ball animation looks really nice! The only thing I can say that would sell it a little more is the deformation when it hits the ground - it returns to a perfect circle. Having it squish into the ground, then spring back up would really improve the "water-balloon" feel of it.
Just a suggestion though.

Nice avatar Loklac & welcome to the board !


***Note to myself***

Stop the digging operations, we're getting a little too underground for the safty of the underground.

Thanks Goliath, that image, surprisingly, came from 15 minutes with photoshops clone stamp tool. Pretty interesting what you can do with it, eh?
Ahem, but that is for another day, another thread.

@Loklac: Thx for your comment. The ball does squash on impact, and it's only perfectly round at the top of the bounce. Sadly the details got lost in the poor rendering i did.
Glad you pointed it out.

The rig is being redone to produce better deformation, and the controls will most likely change as well.
Once it's done i will post better animations i promise

Oh, and i like your avatar by the way...

Gnuren

Ah file compression. Ruining animation since 1766.
It will be great to see the finished thing

And thanks, haha, glad you like my avatar. I have to say, your vine is pretty sweet. I assume you animated it yourself? I really dig any of that sort of growing/building animation. It's pretty cool.

.... eh, there was a dig pun in that last sentence waiting to be used, but I'm going to ignore it.