Tiffany Tseng's Animations for
CS 417, Spring 2020
Project 5: Rube Goldberg Machine
4/8/2020
This Rube Goldberg machine is a continuation of the ill-fated bouncy ball's story from project 3 and also includes the roller coaster from project 4. It ties the events of projects 3 and 4 together nicely through a series of overly complex mechanisms.
After failing to finish the sky race, the bouncy yellow ball manages to get himself onto a terrifying roller coaster ride thanks to pure bad luck and his traitorous cap activating a machine that starts the coaster. Maybe this was a set-up to punish losers that cannot finish the sky race.
The animation is below:
The Machine
All the components making up the machine that started the roller coaster.
1. Dominoes
The dominoes consisted of copies of "Introducing Maya 2016." I implemented this with MASH dynamics.
2. Wooden spoon catapult
The dominoes fall onto the spoon, making it catapult a ball onto the metal slide above. The spoon and ball were not animated with Maya dynamics.
3. Slides
The first slide transfers the ball from the spoon catapult into a bucket, which activates a pulley.
This second slide comes after the pulley that the first slide activates. It transfers another, heavier ball to push a rotating shelf.
4. Pulleys
The first pulley (to the left of this text) uses the weight of the red ball to pull the weight into the air, which pushes against a rotating shelf that causes a ball to be deposited onto the second slide.
The second pulley (the two images to the right) uses the weight of several metal balls to tilt the bucket containing the cannonball until it deposits the cannonball into the cannon.
5. Rotating shelves
The first shelf rotates so that a heavy metal ball can roll onto the metal slide.
This second shelf pours a bunch of small metal balls into a bucket below. The shelf has a narrow shape on one end to funnel all the balls into the bucket below. The small balls, like the dominoes, were also animated with MASH dynamics.
Additional parts: cannon and lever
The cannon shoots a cannonball back to Project 4, where the roller coaster is. I used squash and stretch when loading and shooting the cannon to give it more character.
The lever turns on the roller coaster and is activated by the cannonball that was shot from the house.
