Ball roll 3D

3D Ball roll - Softimage

The link above will take you to my clip of a 3D ball roll.

The task was to create a 3D ball roll in softimage, the previous weeks work - making the potato heads was set to help us get familiar with the software before we started on the 3D work. I am a visual learner, so when i am in a class and being shown what to do on a screen in front of me, i learn much quicker then if i was to learn by myself. So i found this task to be relatively easy.

Once you open the softimage programme you go to the left hand side of the programme and click the primitive menu. Once you have done this you click onto the shape sphere.

This will appear immediately onto the grid display. To make it easier to see you can change the viewing of the 3D sphere by clicking the drop down button just to the top right of the screen and changing the menu from 'grid' to 'shaded'. This makes the sphere opaque and therefore you can not see the background grid.

Once you have the sphere ready and shaded, it is pretty much like AfterEffects. You have to key frame the ball in different positions in the time line to make  the ball move. You can also manipulate the ball to fade in and out of the roll to create a smoother look.

Learnt short cuts:

vertical pan = S
Slip forward = ctrl + shift + left arrow
Slip backwards = ctrl + shift + right arrow
Zoom tool = Z
Hide grid = G
Nudge forward = ctrl + right arrow
Nudge backwards = ctrl + left arrow
Horizontal pan = X
Undo = ctrl + cmd + Z
Clear all transitions = E