Pendulum Animation

Before I started working on the pendulum animation in Maya we were being shown references of pendulum animations in real life and how they work, as well as looking at the physics of pendulum motion and how the law of physics of it will work. We were also suggested to make our own pendulum object as your own reference such as a conker on a string, it's just a shame that conkers went out of season a month ago! To improvise on this, I instead used a tangerine tied onto a shoe lace which surprisingly wasn't as messy as I thought i'd be considering I just drilled a pen through the centre of it. I then used masking tape to tie the two laces together, making sure that the orange wasn't being lifted at two different points and began to let physics move the object from side to side.

I think this experiment did help me get a physical understanding on how pendulum movements work and how you can feel the speed and weight of an object, however this experiment was also flawed in some way as the movement towards the end began going in a circular motion compared to a regular side-to-side. Not only that, but considering that I was holding onto the string and can have small movements even when standing still means that this experiment isn't as accurate as I anticipated. Nevertheless, I still think this was a great thing to try and it's definitely helped me fulfil my observation of pendulum movement.

https://vimeo.com/474752626

The key points that I noted in the lecture was that in every swinging motion the pendulum loses energy and reduces the length of the swing, however the speed of the motion stays the same between the two different points. By using this knowledge, I made sure that each swing was a second long and lost about 15 degrees rotation from the movement before: this made the animation appear realistic and lawful.

https://vimeo.com/473985481