Marble Run Animations

Did you know that Blender has a scripting API and allows you to create your own tools and automations using Python? I thought it was time to start experimenting with that and learning more about the possibilities. I love learning new things by starting small personal projects, and what project is better than Marbles?
I started by calculating a (semi-) realistic path that a marble would take while falling down and bouncing off objects and added that path as key frames to the animated marble. I kept thinking of more features that would make the marble run cooler and I decided that it absolutely needed some music on the bounces. So this is a list of features I have implemented so far:

• Read a music piece from its sheet music representation in musicXML
• Calculate the marble's path and rotations and set the marble's keyframes for the animation
• Move the Xylophone keys into the correct positions all at once or dynamically while rotating a key
• Color the keys depending on the note played
• Follow Bezier curves that are placed into the marble's path

After creating the run and keyframes using my new tool, I just needed to adjust the appearances, add a glass shader, and then wait a few hours while my somewhat slow computer rendered the whole animation.

For some results, check out the YouTube Channel @MagicalMarbleMelodies .