3D Beach Ball in After Effects

Skill Level: Easy

Version: AE 4.0

Instructions

Create a comp that is 1000x500 and call it Beach Ball Flat . You can either make your design in Photoshop and import a 1000x500 image, or make something in AE. I made a file in AE by placing 5 solid squares of color next to each other. Each is 200x500. If you do make your image in Photoshop, you'll want to make sure that the image is seamless.
Create a new comp at 720x540 or 640x480 or what ever you need. Lets call it Ball Spinning . Drag 'ballflat' into ball spinning and center it. Apply the FE Sphere effect. Here is my Keyframe Data for FE Sphere.
- Rotation X - 0 revolutions and 0° at frame 0, 1 revolution, 0° at the final frame.
- Rotation Y - 0 revolutions and 0° at frame 0, 1 revolution, 0° at the final frame.
- Rotation Z- 0° - no keyframe marked
- Radius-0.5
- Offset - 500,250
- Light Direction - 45°
- Light Depth - 0.5
- Ambient FE Sphere - 0.0625
- Diffuse FE Sphere - 0.5
- Specular - .5
- Roughness - 0.03125
- Reflective - 0
- Enable Internal Shadows - N0
- Enable Transparency Falloff - N0
If you're feeling lazy, see the .aep file so you don't have to enter all this info.
Want to make the ball bounce? Use expressions or old skool motion math for a realistic gravity bounce. See the Basketball tutorial for more on that.