The auto-clamped handle question

I'm guessing a bit here, but I think you could scale in Y to zero with the keyframe and the handles selected to make them flat and then set them to auto-clamped and that should keep them more in their place? Like a dad getting firm when the kid doesn't want to listen, no more ice-cream son, or I'll scale you in Y and auto-clamp you. 

I think it's not a trick in that sense of the word, since it's not doing some specific thing that can be imitated anywhere over and over and get the same result. Wayne is setting the handles and getting the curves just so the ball behaves as if it's going down a slope, but there's nothing to it, it's just how the handles would have to be in order for the ball to appear to be going down in that situation.

Wayne is not thinking, ok, a ball on a slope, I need curve configuration #27 for this, good thing I memorized how the curves go. No, he scales the handles on the starting keyframes so that it takes more time for the ball to easy out of it's position, just because that's how things in the world behave, since the ball will start slow and then accelerate, and that's the behavior you're trying to imitate in the animation. But it's not so mechanical that you need to keep in memory everything as is. You're trying to get the feel of the ball rolling down and the graph editor is in the way and you know how to manipulate it to create the illusion you desire out of the ball moving. 

In other words, it's not like you need to have that memorized for when balls have to go down slopes, it's not like the handle's positions and auto-clamping are going to be needed as is in the exact same configuration on other situations, you are animating the ball, look pass the graph editor. It's like drawing with a pencil, you are not calculating in your head where the next stroke is going to go, the angle your stroke needs to achieve or how you have to press the pencil to the paper with a force of 0.23 pressure per inch; no you're just drawing, the wrist doesn't need to think, you're creating to the point where you don't feel the pencil in your hand. Same with animation, don't pursue the trick always working or curves specific positions, the ball needs to drop and there isn't going to be a thing you need to always have static and present in your head for it.

The important thing is to grasp the concepts, like numbers, the 2 isn't a two, not really, it's just a squiggly line, just a representation, the key is the concept behind it. The graph editor is yucky, a bunch of lines and points, just a representation, but with it you can create the illusion of the movement, but all the UI is getting in the way, that's not important. Like in The Matrix, there is no spoon. Well I'm basically ranting at this point.

Hopefully that's helpful. We'll wait for Wayne, right now on his side of the world it's the future, people haven't started to wake up, we'll have to wait a little bit.