Tennis Ball

Above is my bounce of a Tennis Ball, created on Softimage.
In doing this, I took several progressing captures:

Capture 1 – For the first capture I looked at timing first and foremost, using the Positional Y-Axis only at this moment. I looked slightly at the F-Curves, trying to create the linear look needed when the tennis ball connects with the grass.

Capture 2 – Added ‘hits’ to each bounce while leaving the peaks very spline-like. I also tried to make the 2^nd peak float more. This didn’t go so well, so I am going to edit this again. I took the change to the 2^nd peak out, and changed the timing a fair bit, resulting in a much more effective bounce time-wise.

Capture 3 – Now I am going to add in the ‘squash’ and ‘stretch’ elements to the ball, to give it more character, something which I did not do for my bowling ball because it is a lot heavier of an object. This went very well indeed, once I had worked out how to approach it. So much so, I reckon I will only need one or two more captures.

Capture 4 – Fixed an issue I was having with the second bounce. Now I am just going to finish off tightening up the timings of the squashes and stretches.

Capture 5 – Fixed just two squashes, and now have a piece I am pleased with.