Animating Biological Phenomena

So this morning baymate was telling me how she's taking a course called Intro to Maya with Gael McGill, a former gradstudent here at Harvard Med School. Gael co-founded Digizyme and gained quite a bit of attention with his fantastic "cellular movie". You know the one where a kinesin motor protein drags a vesicle along a microtubule.

Gael is teaching gradstudents and postdocs here at Harvard Medical School how to use Maya, a program used to generate animated 3D-movies of the type popularized by Pixar Studios. There are even plans to have a repository of 3D animations of cellular phenomena here at HMS. I wonder to myself ... first we discovered powerpoint, is the next step Maya? In five years, will I be presenting my favorite model in the form of a 3D-animation? Will scientific talks turn into video games?

For now baymate is attempting to use Maya to create in silico cells. Here's what she drew last week:

i-5c88f3feb411ae75867bae84864db9cd-baymatesparsnip.jpg

My only question is neuron, parsnip or turnip?

More like this

oh man, I want to take that class so bad. Do you know if that class has any online resources? I've tried out Maya a little bit and there seems to be a dearth of tutorials or information online that are applicable to science-related things.

Reminds me of my obsession with 3D studio max a few years back. I had visions of blowing everyone away at talks with my 3-dimensional virus particle. Actually now that I think back it was going pretty well. Then I got busy doing experiments or something and forgot the whole thing.

good on baymate though. Science needs more of this.

The technical gains derived from film, CCD cameras, and now 3-d animation are not a source of unalloyed good. The magnificent tradition of primary scientific illustratation is largely gone, and that is not, in my view, an entirely good thing. Some examples of what once was:

http://www.monoscope.com/2007/11/microscopist_christian_gottfri.html

The best of these blow ANY recent 3D animation of cellular interiors clean out of the water.

By George Smiley (not verified) on 03 Nov 2007 #permalink

I agree, these kinds of illustrations are great but, being able to turn that into a 3D model and animate it, to me is far more valuable - especially in wanting to really see that organism in 3D space. Static illustrations are good as far as that goes but, movement ads a whole other layer as does being able to rotate it and move in and around it - something that is really not feasible with hand drawn illustrations.

Creating art and doing illustrative work using computer 3D animation tools requires every bit as much artistic talent and observational skill as does creating it with paper and drawing implements. Only the tools are different.

I don't use Maya much but, I have used 3D animation tools for years such as Electric Image, Cinema 4D, and (my new favorite) Modo.

These tools are use primarily for 3D animation and visual effects work for film and TV but, are great for any kind of 3D illustration and animation work. As far as "scientific uses" go, they are artist's tools more than they are scientific tools - in as much as paper and colored pencils are "artist's tools" more so than scientific tools. it is how you use them.