Exploration of different technologies is just plain fun!
In our second exploratory work for the quarter, I decided to jump back into Blender, but this time it was to explore a molecular modeling add-on by the name of CellBlender. This add-on along with MCell is a product that has come out of collaboration between the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute and Carnegie Mellon University. To install the add-on some basic terminal commands were necessary and in the end, a basic install did the trick rather than the complicated process laid out in the tutorial. Once it was installed the fun started right away as I began to work on the interface and figure out how everything worked. It has the incredible capability to model molecular reactions that are practically 100% accurate.
Using a scientific add-on for artistic purposes presented some interesting context for this specific project, especially when the type of reaction is considered–in this case the Lotka-Volterra version of a predator-prey model. Once I understood how to model this reaction, I decided to change the container in which the reaction was happening. To my surprise, this had much more drastic effects that I had anticipated. It also made for ridiculous swings in render times. The more complicated the container model, the longer the render time. One of the tests I did inside a model of The Statue of Liberty just wouldn’t even render. I think it took 30 minutes to do 6 frames of a 1000 frame animation. This became a bit frustrating as the model I chose was important for the concept I was trying to achieve. However, after several tries, I decided that I needed to go for a simpler container model so I decided to place a model of the Pentagon into the animation. Unfortunately, I hit another snag. The program requires a perfectly seamless model for the animation to run successfully. This presented even more frustration as I found models I liked and then spent hours trying to fix the various issues with them. This did help me better my skills at fixing 3D models but it was to no avail with respect to the animation. The fixed models would probably print but they wouldn’t render in the animation. So, I decided to make a very simple model of the Pentagon that I knew would run for my presentation.
The Statue of Liberty is an American monument that has various meanings, the most relevant of which lies in it being a symbol of freedom and cooperation. As the statue was originally intended to be a structure co-built by the French and the Americans to celebrate our independence. Since it was constructed it has had several other meanings, especially to immigrants. In the end, The Statue of Liberty can be seen as a representation of The United States and so, conceptually, I wanted to use it as the container for this predator-prey reaction to spark a conversation around the current state of this country and how various citizens and officials alike are preying on other members of this country in a way that can be likened to this environmental model. A model which is based on the interactions between populations of wolves and moose in Michigan. In the end, I’m still striving to make this piece a reality.
However, I had to simplify for the presentation. That being said, it was still important to have some conceptual elements to the piece so, like I stated before, I decided to use a simplistic model of the Pentagon to address other instances of predator-prey relationships present in this country.
After presenting this exploration there was one idea that stood out as I iterate on this project: use an invisible shell container inside the desired model. This simple solution will allow me to achieve the concept that I’m going for while making sure the animation renders and renders in a reasonable amount of time. Other important things I need to tackle is figuring out how to load in my own molecule models because right now it is limited to a predetermined set of shapes and letters. Once these two elements are addressed this tool can be the foundational element of an entire series of works!