Donna Massam

During our Thursday seminar we were asked to create a little something in 3D Studio Max, playing around with the different features that it offers. I decided to produce a simple ball bounce, taking the idea from the basic ball bounce technique used in animation. I used a tutorial which guided me through. So today in our 3 hour break in between our lecture and tutorial today me and Hayley decided to take a shot at the task.


I used a tutorial (Creating a ball bounce)
I had already previously with the tutorial given in our seminar knew how to use key frames and the timeline to produce an animation. This tutorial taught me how to use the timeline to create the different stages of the bounce, for example as the ball goes closer to the floor, it squashes as if it was a squishy ball, it also unsquashes as it comes up from the floor. It taught me how to create the different main key frames of the ball bounce (the ball in the air to begin wit, the ball hitting the floor and the ball in the air at the end). It then taught me how to create a path from each of these key frames using the Trajectories option in the motions panel, also using the Trajectories options the tutorial told me how to edit the path, to make the bounce more of a bounce, using key frames.

I found 3D Studio Max a lot easier to use than the program i had previously used for 3D animation, Lightwave.