A short animation made for the Phoenix Suns using Maya and After Effects.
Before I started working on anything, I created a reference to plan out the timing for the animation. The final product did not follow the exact timing, but it was a good starting point and made it easier dial in on the speed and height of the ball as it bounces.
After I was done planning the animation, I created my own assets since it was a lot more simple than finding ones that would load in Maya. All I needed were a few shaders for the models and they were ready for rigging.
Making the animation simple and repeatable was the goal of this rig. There are no visible controls, but the basketball can be animated to perform 3 different actions; translate, squash/stretch, and rotate. Each action was put into its own group, where I made sure only the necessary attributes for that group in the hierarchy could be seen and animated.
The camera was placed on a motion path so that it could move along at a consistent pace. I decided not to attach the aim locator to a motion path so I could animate it freely.
I took this quick render at the end to ensure that everything looked good before I rendered an image sequence.
