After we had decided what small animation each group member would do, we thought about what would be included in each scene. The first thought that came into my head when considering doing a Golf scene was inspired by the Golfing computer game “Tiger Woods PGA Tour” Series. As a gamer and golfer, I have a keen interest in these types of games and have experienced playing them and the different motions it has in it.
When putting the ball on the green, after the ball makes contact with the club, the camera zooms in and focuses behind the ball. This is to give the impression of getting a “Ball Cam” or what is happening from the point of view of the ball. This is very effective because it increases the anticipation for the player because they feel involved as if they were the ball. I wanted to create this form of animation in my scene because I feel that it is very effective.
The 2 issues that I was going to have with this scene was going to be quality of modelling. The camera would be focussed in solely on the golf ball and watching it roll to the hole. This meant that people would be looking at the golf ball and the grass it was rolling on. This therefore made it very important that the quality of the Golf Ball and the Green was incredibly important.
Golf Ball+green
Once I had put the models of the grass and the golf ball together, the rest of the scene was then focussed on ensuring the camera was positioned correctly behind the ball. I tried one method of doing this using Path Constraints but was un-able to get the desired animation so had to find a separate way.
As mentioned, the first method I tried to use was with “Path Constraints”. This allows you to create a spline and then have an object follow it in an animation. I created a line with a slight bend in it to create a more realistic look for the golf ball. I then selected the golf ball and added a “Path Constraint” to it and selected the line. I have never used this method before and overall am very impressed with the possible outcomes that could be achieved however it would need a lot of time to be spent looking through all the options.
Ball on spline
The reason I had to change method was because even though the spline worked fine and the animation ran with no problems, I was unable to change the speed that the ball would travel in different places. The only way I thought that this would be possible would be to add multiple lines one after the other and would have more flexibility with the keyframes.
I decided to change my method and go for the method that I had originally considered, which is something I have used before. I used the “Autokey” function to create my key frames and split up my timeline into sections for different parts of the rolling sequence. I started off with a small section between the first 2 keyframes and increased the size for the next 2 and the final 2. This would mean that the ball would start off travelling at a high speed and gradually slow down just like a golf ball in real life would do
The final part of the animation I needed to do was to implement a form of roll on the golf ball. At this stage I had the ball moving towards the hole at the correct speeds and in the right direction however I did no have any roll on the ball. This meant that the animation did not look natural because it looked as if the ball was just floating across the surface.
I originally struggled to think of a way that this could be done but eventually came to a solution, which turned out to be very simple in hindsight. All I needed to do was, with the “Autokey” function on, use the rotate function on the ball at the keyframes. This then meant that the ball would complete the amount of rotations I desired in between each set of keyframes. I could also make it so that as the ball slowed down, it rotated less. This also added to the realism of the motion.
Rotation on ball
The Golf Ball finishes this scene sitting on the Lip (edge) of the hole, which will upset the golfer because he had the hopes of it going in.
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