My experience with CG Modelling

Over the last 2 months, I’ve indulged in CG or Computer Graphics. CG modelling or 3D modelling is creating a 3 dimensional surface of an object or shape by changing the faces, vertices, polygons etc.

I have been using a simple 2015 Macintosh Air with a 1.6GHZ CPU and Integrated GPU.

3d modelling can be used in a lot of industries and fields like gaming, animation, entertainment, architecture, advertising and healthcare. Using the free open-source 3d modelling software known as Blender I have traversed gaming, animation and most importantly bio-technology.


In this blog post, I will talk about my experience with CG and Biology.

Bio-technology is a growing career and industry. In the upcoming digital age, the use of 3d modelling to visualise and create virtual biological components is a highly demanded skill.

Cell

It all started off with a simple cell.

I created this cell using a simple UV Sphere. After applying a few modifiers such as the Subdivision and Displacement modifiers, the sphere now had a bumpy look.

The cells in object view

When creating biological components, colour schemes are absolutely important to efficiently differentiate between cells. The colours in my project were created using an Emission texture and a Glass BSDF to add a shiny reflective effect.

The material nodes

Mitosis

After this, I decided to take it one step further and animate cell mitosis. Mitosis is a process of cell division that creates two daughter cells.

To make the animation easier, I followed a tutorial about ‘Metaballs’ and used their separating effect to virtualise mitosis.

11th Frame of Mitosis Animation

The material and shading for this project was very precise because I planned to merge a nucleus and cell together into 1 animation. Therefore, the outer cell membrane has to be translucent and detailed.

Material nodes

The animation was created using keyframes and moving two ‘Metaballs’ away from each over 20 frames.

I repeated this process for a smaller ‘Metaball’ for the nucleus.

The final animation

DNA

The next biological item I chose was a DNA.

The DNA was made by joining cylinders to create the base structure and using modifiers like the Mirror, Array and Simple Deform modifiers to adjust it.

Colouring the DNA didn’t matter much to me so I simply added a bumpy texture and an orange colour to it.

Material Nodes of the DNA
Render of 3 DNA in Eevee

Mitochondria

From here on it only got more complicated and I decided to follow a tutorial and create a Mitochondria. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of a cell that generates the chemical energy needed.

Creating the Mitochondria contributed the most to my 3d modelling skills. I learned all sorts of methods and techniques while modelling and shading.

The Mitochondria was created by cutting a capsule using the boolean tool and adding a bezier curves.

Mitochondria object

Colouring the mitochondria was a long process. It consisted of translucent, emissive, glass, bump, voronoi and diffuse textures. Each part of the mitochondria was detailed and made translucent accordingly. Furthermore, I used the DNA of the previous project in the mitochondria as well.

The liquid effect in a Mitochondria

For my own experience, I also modelled the DNA, ATP, Granules and Ribosomes.

Final Render

Bacteria

The latest project I took was Bacteria in which I learned how to use the particle system to create the Pili and a bezier curve for the flagellum.

The bacterias capsule was created by splitting a sphere at its center edge and elongating each side. I also added particles to this and adjusted their settings to make the Pili of a bacteria.

The flagellum was a long bezier curve, bevelled by a circle.

Particle settings of the capsule

The materials for the bacteria were the same throughout, a simple emissive node controlled by a fresnel. This gave a glowing effect to the bacteria.

Material Node Setup
Final Render

While rendering any scientific model, I always keep the lighting bright and simple. Visualising the model is very important for scientific renders and fancy lighting doesn’t look very good.


Anything Computer Graphics looks really amazing and gives you a feeling of self-satisfaction. Biology takes it to another level breaking away from the common modelling projects into more detailed and educative activities. I’ve definitely learned a lot through this, and each project enabled me to use Blender in different ways. I can make my own models from scratch now, like a minion character, my laptop, etc.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed and let me know what you think about 3D modelling in the comments below.

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