So I made a nucleus model for the april fools release. All I need now is an image texture of how the nucleus should look.
Someone asked me about this on a PM, and I thought it was a good question. For the nucleus, the UV is just a circle inscribed in a square, so this is how the texture should look:
Remember to use a png if you want part of it to be transparent.
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Can I make a suggestion for the ER and golgi? I think they should be placed behind the nucleus so they wrap around it. At the moment they appear too separated from the nucleus, which just leads to the cell as a whole looking cluttered.
A quick and dirty illustration to explain what I mean:
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Did some research. The ER is actually connected to the outer nuclear membrane. The inner nuclear membrane is the one with the pores. Idk if maybe we want to do a cross sectional view of this with all the genetic material visible inside or a semi-cross sectional view with the inner nuclear membrane intact, while the outer membrane and ER is split.
I can do a quick sketch of what I mean when I get home
Anyway the main point is it seems that the ER and nucleus are one so perhaps separate and free floating sections would not be the most realistic choice. It’d be better represented as one model.
The outer nuclear membrane, inner nuclear membrane, and ER membrane are all parts of the same membrane – if you had a hollow sphere carved out of swiss cheese, with extra bits of swiss cheese grafted all over the outer surface, the surface of the cheese is analogous to the membrane.The nuclear pores are like donut holes, connecting the outer surface with the inner surface.
The ER irl actually forms a network that reaches throughout the entire cell. Maybe someday we’d be able to represent that, but right now I agree that the best course of action is to have a single model for both nucleus and ER, with the ER wrapping around like above.
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Nucleus + ER model concept art thingy
Question: What of the Smooth ER? How about the Golgi apparatus :0
Each golgi complex is more of a separate entity, though they generally stay quite close to the nucleus.
The smooth ER is part of the same network as the rough ER, sharing the same membrane. In your sketch maybe 2 or 3 sections of the ER could be smooth ER instead (which looks like a network of fused tubes instead of flat stacked sheets).
I’ll draw up something tomorrow.
Looks great! Maybe there should be more of colour gradient between the nucleus and ER/gogli apparatus. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait for models though, we can’t exactly use an image, though it’s great concept art for modellers to work off.
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Thank you
Yes it was intended for the modelers to use 
Actually, an image may be better. You cant actually see the organelles from any angle except top down orthographic, so having 3d organelles is just a waste of processing power. If we were to implement a less restricted camera, then 3D would be the way to go, but in the game’s current state, I’d say 2D organelles would be much better.
They’d have to be some pretty high quality images. They’d also need to have animations.
You can still see the 3D-ness of organelles when cells are further away on-screen, so having 2D images there instead would completely break immersion.
@Oliveriver just keep in mind that at the current moment half the organelles and the cell membrane are sprites.
Which ones?
Nucleus from disco release and vacuole.
So, it’s the new modeler here. Are we in need of replacing the organelles which are currently just sprites, or focus on new types of organelles instead? Both may be in need, but which one is more urgent?
We’re probably not going to switch to models from sprites for a while, as sprites are really fast to render, and they look the same in the top-down camera angle that we have. However, here are a few things I can think of:
- Nucleus model. We actually have a bunch of nucleus models at the moment, but all of them don’t work for various reasons. We have a sketch drawn by atrox in the current version, but it doesn’t look very professional. If you do decide to work on this, the best idea would be to create a unit sphere in blender, texture it, and render with one sun light directly above to create a uniform shadow. Then I can just take your rendered square and put it on the nucleus. This post and the two beneath it have more information.
- You can try creating a new flagellum model since the old one doesn’t really fit with the new graphics and a lot of people seem to dislike it. This is the harder of the four as it involves adding a skeleton and doing some anything, which might be hard to export to ogre. Again, if you choose this one, you will have to bake all of your cycles/mudbox textures to an image and UV unwrap the flagella since things like SSS, volumetric shaders, and other cycles stuff don’t translate well into Ogre. For transparency, you can use the alpha channel of your texture.
- You could try modeling a toxin emitter if you want. Basically, it should be a spherical organelle that has an animation that causes a small sphere to “bud off” and move away in a straight line. When the smaller sphere touches the membrane we can spawn a compound cloud at that location and return back to the static model. Not sure how you would do that though. Metaballs would look the nicest, but I’m not sure if it’s possible to import metaballs into Ogre. You should try Googling that if you want to give it a try. Alternatively, you can try your own interpretation of how agent secretors should work.
- Finally, you can model a couple bacteria species for when we implement them into the game. There should be multiple species (hopefully with distinctively different shapes and colors so that the player can easily tell them apart). While this is arguably the most important modeling you can do, it will be a while until bacteria actually make it into the game and people see your work.
These are the 4 I can think of at the moment. Choose whichever you feel most comfortable and inspired to work on, and ask anyone if you have questions/comments/concerns.
Nice to have you join the team! Hope you have a lot of fun.