Organelle Models

Here they are at a different angle

Normal: 519 verts, 1006 tris

Subdivided:

I’ve had some time recently to create 2 new organelles, here’s my Mitochondria. I didn’t know what color we were going for so I made a light blue one and a red one, both have purple interiors.

Here’s the blue one: 400 verts, 792 tris

And my favorite of the 2, the red one:

Here they are side by side:

And a video of their animations:
Mitochondria Pair Video

And finally, I made a chloroplast: 338 verts, 646 tris

Here’s a video of the chloroplast’s animations:

Chloroplast Video

They look great! We have quite a few mitochondria and chloroplasts now though, so we’ll have to choose between them.

I’d also like to point out that it might be a good idea to have a set colour scheme for the organelle set so they can be identified easily at a glance. So not too much mixing of colours for single organelles, and each type having a distinct colour (like chloroplasts green and nuclei purple).

No big deal, I modelled, textured, and animated them in like 3 hours. It actually took longer to render them than to make them.

My only concern is the lack of communication between the developers. I understand that many of them have jobs or go to school, as I do, but it’s still troubling to see how slow progress is.

But enough cynicism, I’ll remember to stick to a scheme, my original was Yellow/Orange for ER and golgi, Purple for Nucleus, Purplish red for Mitochondria, and of course green for chloroplast.

Thanks for the feedback!

Since you mention a lack of communication between the developers, I’m assuming you haven’t been added to our Slack group. Could you PM me your email?

(By the way welcome to the team)

@Nanu, those look fantastic; however, I’d say that we probably shouldn’t be making multiple copies of the same organelle. Eventually, we’ll need a couple copies for when we implement upgrades, but at the current moment only one will be used and the rest will be gathering dust.

On another note, I just had an idea for how we can make the organelles move around. Rather than make it procedural, like I originally wanted, we could (and should) probably just give each organelle an animation that moves it in a realistic pattern. Overlaps won’t be a big deal since cells are three-dimensional. Basically, I want each organelle to have a bone attached to it and have that bone “float” around a certain space (say twice the size of the organelles). This animation should be loopable, so it should end at the same position where it started. Do you think you can do this @Nanu?

Of course. I’m not sure how the current membrane works, I assume it uses metaballs. But in the model cell I posted on my introduction, the organelles were attached to the bones that made the membrane move.

Of course this may not be so easy in engine, so I’ll animate each organelle to move around independently as you mentioned, save the ER, as its attached to the nucleus.

I’ll render a new cell tonight, using your suggested method. I’ll post it around noon tomorrow.

The membrane uses an algorithm described by @tjwhale, so it does not use metaballs. Either way, the membrane itself does not have any bones that make it move. As I mentioned in your other thread, there should be a post somewhere on how to export animations from blender to ogre. But you’ll basically need a single bone attached to each organelle (so the organelles themselves do not deform as in your videos) that has a very fluid animation. Then, I simply load this animation in the lua files and everything works great. I actually think you can make do with animating a single organelle and then we can reuse this animation for all the other ones.

Hey, I know i promised the animations by today, but I forgot about an essay i had to write for my pre-modern history class. I’ll get the animations done as soon as possible, but i don’t think I’ll finish them today.

Ok, I wasn’t sure exactly what you wanted, so here’s a render of what i think you were saying. I left the deformation, just because I like how it looks, but i can remove it. The skeleton that deforms the mesh is a child of one bone, which is used to rotate and move it around without messing up the deformations. I also did this in kind of a rush, so its not as fluid as I’d hoped, I’ll work on making it less abrupt this week.

Mitochondria Animation

Don’t worry about it, finish it whenever you have time. It’s a volunteer project.

It’s okay, we’re not on a tight schedule. The animation is good, but I do have a few comments. Although I really like the deformation to the actual model, I do not think it will be possible to add it to the game (at least at the current moment). Another thing to note, the area the organelle is allowed to move around should not exceed more than twice its size, otherwise there is a chance that it will float outside the membrane and do all kinds of other funky behavior, which we don’t want. Final thing, though this is just a matter of preference, I’d say the organelle should be constricted to the xy-plane, so they should not flip around. That said, it looks great; keep up the fantastic work!


Completely different topic

Here are the colors I propose for the organelles so that the player should always be able to figure out which one is which:
Chloroplasts: Green
Mitochondria: Purple/Blue
Thermoplast: Orange
Nucleus: Purple
ER and Golgi Complex: brownish-yellow/orange
Storage vacuoles: Light blue
Agent secretors: depending on the compound they produce

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Ok, I’ll make a new animation this week, but about keeping it to the x/y plane, I feel like that would make it seem too… 2 dimensional. And I’ll tone down the movement a bit.

I know, but I feel like irl an organelle wouldn’t just randomly flip around, they are anchored by microtubules in specific spots after all. Anyway, let’s see what other people have to say about this.

Also, it seems like discourse is getting mad at me for posting too much, so I guess I’ll take a break to—and I quote—“provide adequate time for other people to share their points of view”.

Since TheCreator is so selfishly projecting his point of view I’ll add in that I agree with what he said, specifically about the flipping. I think the movement looks great but organelles would be held in place by microtubules so there probably wouldn’t be any flipping.

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I don’t think there was any bickering ;), seemed more like camaraderie to me.

Discourse, the software that runs this discussion board, has loads of built-in features designed to try and keep discussions fair, streamlined, etc. Warning people who post too much on one thread in a short time is just one of those things. Discourse was being an overzealous discussion mediator and we just joked about it :-p

Ok, new animation. The mitochondria now moves less and only rotates on the Z axis. I also kept the version that deformed, and brought back the blue, since we’re sticking with bluish purple mitochondria. So there’s 4 total, here’s the link.

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I love it. It’s plain and simple and I think this animation will look good with the other organelles. Do you know how to export it or would you like me to guide you through the process?

Yeah, i tried to figure it out on the tutorial from the main site, but i got a little lost. I have the files, I just dont know where to install them

Are you talking about this tutorial: http://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t1402-basic-blender-modeling-animation-and-exporting-to-ogre-tutorial? If so, where exactly did you get stuck? To install the addons into blender you need to File->User Preferences->Addons->Install from file->Save user settings.