Learn how to animate a bouncing ball in Blender in this beginner tutorial!
Before we can go and do character animation, it’s important that we know a bit more about some of the animation controls in Blender as well as apply some of that 12 principles that we learnt earlier. In this tutorial, you will learn how to animate a bouncing ball! We will aim to make a realistic and appealing bouncing ball animation. Do not fret as this will be a very easy tutorial! I will show you step-by-step how to achieve this and will also show some of the tools of Blender that may help you not only for the bouncing ball but also for character animations later on!
Almost every animator would have started out with a bouncing ball animation. The main reason is that it is simple enough to get you started with animation, as well as learn some of the core skills required to create compelling animations later on.
By the end of this tutorial, you will learn how to:
- Plan an animation
- Get experience with Pose 2 Pose
- Apply some of the 12 Principles of Character Animation
- Have a finished bouncing ball animation!
Feeling brave?
As an extra task to help you get better, you can try doing different versions of the bouncing ball animation to simulate different weights of the ball. For example, a ping pong ball, tennis ball, soccer ball, and bowling ball. Note that different weights will of course affect the timing and the height of the bounce. Studying references can definitely help you in determining the timing and height! If you’re feeling more confident, you can also try to create another version of the bouncing ball animation to simulate the force of the ball (e.g, a ball being pegged on the ground rather than just being lightly dropped).
