Spatial Modelling

Spatial modelling

The Modelling team has been tasked with simulating the biological interactions of our proposed system at the nanoscale level using the Autodesk Maya animation software and Wolfram Mathematica. We have been able to accomplish our tasks towards our ultimate goal of creating a professional, compelling and useful animation for the competitions this fall. Although our qualitative work is presented as a video that lasts only a few seconds, the majority of our time this summer and fall was dedicated towards creating an animation that could be understood by a general audience.

The Maya platform is intended for advanced users to function efficiently although Autodesk has made this software generally usable for beginners. The learning curve is very steep, and we needed to ensure that the time we invested in learning more advanced techniques would serve as beneficial. Since the physics of our biological interactions have not yet been defined, we could not make use of the Maya physics engine to fully calculate the orientations and interaction of the molecules. This had required us initially to use the basic technique of 'key-framing' intervals, and sometimes to key sequential frames as well. In other words, we were required to manually rotate, translate, and scale our molecules individually to define initial and final states, so the Maya physics engine could seamlessly transition the molecule within the given time interval; or, we needed to define each sequential frame to create a sequence of images similar to an animated flip-book.

3D Printing:

Through our collaboration with Cesar Rodriguez, the Senior Research Scientist in the Bio/Nano/Programmable Matter group at Autodesk, we have been exposed to very useful information provided by him and his team. Also, he and his team have offered 3D printing to make a tangible model of our molecules, where our digital models in Maya will be used to create these physical models.