Slide homework V3, take 5

And here it is with tweaked timing on the roll across the table. I have nothing else to say about it, other than the fact that this is the angle it looks best at. Viewing it from the front reveals how terrible the rebound off the ring is! So I'm cheating and covering it up.

Slide homework V3, take 4

Still messing around with this one, trying to get that recoil off the ring just right. It's trickier than I thought!

   

It's kind of random, but I ended up looking at the above video for an idea as to how the ball might react on collision with a solid object. It looks like it actually keeps spinning in pretty much the same direction, so I tried to emulate that in the animation:

I'm still finding it quite difficult to get the timing on the rebound just right - the ball always seems to delay right before changing direction and no matter what I do, I can't seem to fix it. This was my best attempt. I guess I'm not quite getting the hang of manipulating keyframes! I did manage to reduce the delay slightly but that caused the ball to shoot off way too fast which I wasn't able to easily fix, given the relatively small amount of frames between the ball's position at the ring and the edge of the table.

I sped up the exit from the slide/entry to the table a bit but now, looking at it, it seems way too fast - a very sudden change in speed from the ball's descent down the slide. I'm going to tweak that once more to try and get a more consistent speed and then call it a day. 

I'm actually a bit more pleased with the rotation of the ball now, though - I had it change direction on the drop to the floor as it bounces away and it seems to have worked fairly nicely. One small success!

Slide homework V3, take 3

Made a brave attempt at altering some of the timings. Most notably the ball drops with significantly more weight than before - it certainly looks more like it's dropping rather than floating! I also attempted some timing adjustments on the exit from the slide, making it a little faster as it flies out the end and hits the table. I'm still not at all happy with the change in direction after hitting the ring - the physics feel totally off to me. I don't even have anything remotely ball-shaped to reference, and clips on Youtube are only so much help!

I've made some minor adjustments to the ball's bounces as it hits the floor as well, manually tweaking a few frames to give a slightly smoother arc. I've sped up each successive drop as well and brought the smaller bounces a little closer together to help give the idea that it's losing energy.

I can't quite seem to put my finger on why the recoil off the ring looks so off. It would certainly help if I had something to reference. I've got a slight feeling it might just be that the change in direction isn't quite sudden enough. It looks as if the ball hits the ring with a fair bit of speed, so it should probably fly off in the other direction a little more suddenly. Think I'm going to have to keep playing around with it.

I have actually added some rotation to the ball as well, but you can't see it owing to a lack of pattern or texture. I captured a version with the wireframe visible so you can actually see the rotation:

I actually prefer it without the rotation if I'm being honest - I think it's a bit distracting, but that might be because the rotation doesn't make any sense. I have absolutely no idea how colliding with the ring would effect (or is it affect?) the rotation of the ball, and as I said I've got nothing to reference. I went with my best guess and tried to just have it change direction to roll in the direction it's moving but that looks pretty clearly wrong to me.

I'd like to try adding a nicer rotation to the drop and bounce, as well as have it slightly teeter over the edge of the table just before it drops. I think in order for that to work I'd need to have a gradual deceleration after it hits the ring, so it approaches the edge a little more slowly.

But hey, it seems to be shaping up at least! 

Slide homework V3 update

Little update on the previous animation, I've plotted out the ball's drop from the table. It bounces a little as it rolls away - there's a minute amount of squash as it hits the ground, but I think it still needs a little tweaking. I think the arc of the bounce is getting there but the inbetweens need a little manual tweaking to get it smoothed out.

I rendered out a  couple of angles so you can see it a little better:

Bit of an issue as the ball goes down the slide - as you can see in the side view, it's a little too low and the ball clips through the bottom of the slide. Luckily that's simple enough to fix, just need to adjust the position on some of the frames.

There are a lot of timing problems with the last section - notably as the ball bounces off the ring. It's too slow and moves very uniformly - ideally, I think I need to speed up the ball's entry onto the table and have it knock against the ring with just a little more force. The ball could then lose energy as it rolls towards the edge of the table, pausing as it teeters on the edge, before dropping down. The drop itself also lacks any speed or weight - I've not yet adjusted the timing at all, so that will be my next task. After adjusting the timing on the drop I may need to tweak the squash as it hits the ground first time, depending on the speed of the impact. I don't imagine it's a very heavy ball, nor is it too much of a drop, so I don't think it should fall too heavily.

Regardless, it seems to be coming together! The rough motion is there, it's really just going to be about tweaking the timings and adding a bit of polish now. I plan to add rotation to the ball once I'm satisfied with the movement.