3D example

Anaphase Animation

Objects:

The anaphase model consists of 12 objects in all. However, several of the objects are either exact copies or variations of others. Following is a listing of the basic shapes used to create all 12 objects. You may click on the thumbnails to bring up full size screen shots and a short description of each shape.

The Microtubule

The Centrosome

The Kinetochore

The Chromosome

The Dissolving Microtubule

All the objects were created by using very simple primitives such as cylinders and spheres, except for the Chromosome. In making the chromosome, I started with a cylinder. Then I made a sphere and removed half using StudioPro's Boolean Modeler to make it a hemisphere. I copied the hemisphere and put one on each end of the cylinder to make the ends rounded. Then I grouped the three objects together, brought it into StudioPro's 3D sculptor, and formed it into its present shape by manipulating Bezier curves.

Shapes:

StudioPro allows you to create multiple "shapes" within one model. This is a very useful feature. It allows you to work on many objects and animations without having them in the main model space at one time. I set up each object as a separate shape and then combined them together to form additional shapes. The final model was merely a combination of two shapes: the Right Chromosome Complex and the Left Chromosome Complex. All movement was set up in the Chromosome Complex shapes. The only difference between Right and Left Chromosome Complexes is that the Right side has the bleached tubule piece. However, just containing the bleached tubule made the Right Complex much more complicated. Rather than one piece of microtubule, there were three that had to be synchronized, the dissolving tubule had to turn color, and the rate at which all the pieces moved had to be precise because that was the informational focus of the animation.

Using StudioPro's "Atomize" effect to simulate dissolving of the microtubules:

In this model, the most time consuming thing was simulating the breakup of the microtubules as the chromosome is pulled to centrosome. I experimented with several techniques including the "Shatter" and "Explode" in StudioPro, before finally deciding to use the "Atomize" effect. In order to make the atomize effect look the way I wanted it to over the course of the entire animation, I needed to set it to atomize over a long time. So I set the dissolving tubules to start atomizing at 0 seconds and the Chromosomes to start moving at 4.5 seconds. This allows the atomize effect to start going and be atomizing nicely once the chromosome starts moving. I started rendering at frame 60 inorder to allow 4 seconds to pass before rendering would even start. After applying the Atomize effect on a tubule piece, the mass of atomizing pieces could be manipulated in the same way as any other object. I could change their color and move them around as if they were a single object.

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