Version 6
Side
Medium closeup
I slightly altered the bounce so that there was a little more delay between the peak and the drop. I think having a slightly "choppier" drop works well for stationary balls, but when you start to introduce motion and arcs it looks a bit weird - you can't have the ball suddenly clip to the floor whilst maintaining the slow and steady forward motion.
I think it's looking alright, but I'm not too happy with it. I don't think it really moves enough in an arc, especially on the first bounce - it seems to hit an invisible wall then suddenly drop down. That's possibly why it looks so odd on the medium closeup view? I need to smooth that out and perhaps increase its forward movement just a tad.
It's only noticeable on the side view, but the ball's initial drop is once again bothering me. I think it starts too quickly - I need to ease it out of that forward shove before it drops.
Going back to one of my reference videos, I also noticed something about the second bounce:
You can't really notice it without going frame by frame, but the ball actually remains on the ground for an extra frame before it bounces back up into its last, tiny jump. I'll need to look at incorporating this into my own animation I think, see how it looks.
