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Hey everyone, im having a little trouble getting ball physics to work. My player object picks up the ball when contact is made and he throws it when the relevant key is pressed. The problem im having tho is getting the ball to slow as it reaches a certain distance and also to curve parabolically when thrown (like a cannonball). Any help or ideas would be much appreciated.

You need a few variables:

Your object's X,Y and Z velocities
a varible for gravity
and one for air resistance

Add your X,Y and Z velocities to the relevant X,Y and Z positions
Decrease your Y velocity by the gravity value

Easy part done

The harder part is the air friction, which you can get away with not having unless you want ultra-realism.

Air friction is a function of velocty squared and operates against the direction of travel.

Calculate the speed:

speed = sqr(xv ^ 2 + yv ^ 2 + zv ^ 2)

Normalise the velocities:

xv = xv / speed
yv = yv / speed
zv = zv / speed

Apply friction:

speed = speed - friction * speed ^ 2

Calculate the new velocity vector:

xv = xv * speed
yv = yv * speed
zv = zv * speed

Oh, just forgot. You need to check your speed doesn't go below zero and you'll need to experiment with different values of gravity and friction to get what you think looks best, but try small values of around 0.01 first. You also need the initial X,Y and Z velocity vector to be in the direction you want the ball to be thrown in.