Benjamm: Sketch #53

Events 53 - Bouncing Ball
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#1

Final Version:
finalBall

first update:
SoccerBallv2

original post:
SoccerBall_v1

My first time doing one of these challenges! The new Mario Strikers game has inspired me (I also played a ton of the GameCube version over the years it’s one of my favorite games of all time).

The ball is animated by placing the pivot on the bottom of the ball with scaling controlled in Niagara. At first, I over complicated this step by trying to animate in Houdini and bring the animation to Unreal. Silly me realized half-way through doing this process that I could just do this whole step through Niagara, although it was quite fast to transfer over and just use similar animation graphs and interpolation methods.

I enjoyed this project but also had a few moments of identity crisis while making it. As I said, I love Mario Strikers, but it’s hard to mix sports and stylized effects together because there’s almost a deeply nested expectation from things that can so strongly be referenced in the real world (sports). I suppose that’s the challenge of all stylized art :smile:.

Created for this effect:

  • soccer ball / football mesh (Houdini)
  • debris mesh (Houdini)
  • ground crack texture (Substance Designer)
  • air puff/push mesh (Houdini)
  • smoke flipbook (re-used from previous project – Houdini)
  • various stylized noise textures (Substance Designer)
  • smoke mesh (Blender)
  • various shaders, the main ones being for smoke, debris, and anything that glows (Unreal)
1 Like
#2

Nice buildup!! Let’s see where this goes :eyes:

1 Like
#3

update: SoccerBallv2

I added debris and some smoke! I was experimenting with some other particle effects, but they were distracting from the main focus of the ball so I ended up not using them.

#4

Final update:

I added some new debris, a flash, and made the smoke more stylized (and added more of it). I made a shader for the debris that uses a vertex mask multiplied by a crack texture made in designer to create the lingering heat on the debris. I also made a quite complex smoke shader that proved to not be entirely necessary because the smoke fades so quick, but it was good practice :sweat_smile:.

finalBall