My machine starts out with a fan blowing a ball along the table. The ball then falls off and hits a hinged wood plank that knocks another ball of a perch. This second ball falls and hits the first domino, starting off a chain reaction. Finally, the last domino hits the balloon and knocks it into the air, where it spirals off into the wild blue yonder. I replaced the slide from the storyboard with the plank because it allowed me to use more varied constraints.
Alternate:
Rendered with Maya's Software Renderer.
The shading on the balls was created using a ramp texture. The first ball and the balloon are moved by air fields, while there is also an overall gravity field to pull the objects down. I modeled the dominoes and applied a texture I found to them, which require played with the UV coordinates. There are two directional lights in the scene: a main one shining from above and also a dimmer one shining from behind the camera to help illuminate backs and undersides of objects.
