Blender suited to visualisation of molecular technology?

[toontje]

Blender has the capability to do the visualization you are looking for. There are physics systems in place to help for simulation like rigid body physics (bullit), softbody simulation, cloth simulation, fluid simulation and particles that are affected by forces.

Maybe if you should post your request in the Blenderartist too.

[chipmasque]

Please don't take offense at my comments, they're not intended to be derogatory, just frank.

If the price tag is paramount, then you'll not do better than Blender, which provides a great deal of depth, more than could reasonably be expected imo, for its price point. But choosing a tool mainly for its cost (or lack of it) isn't very wise, you should spend some time looking for examples of what Blender-capable artists have done that is similar to what you expect. And without a clearer idea of what you expect in terms of visual characteristics, it's very hard to say whether or not Blender is "suited" to your animation requirements. A more cogent question is whether a prospective animator (possibly yourself) is "suited" to using Blender to produce what you have in mind. Tools do not create the work, tool users do.

Suitability of your animator to interpreting the subject matter is also an important consideration. You're likely looking for technically accurate visualizations, but not all animators may have the background that will make accomplishing this more efficient, and aesthetically pleasing as well (an important aspect of the project if it's intended for public display).

The examples at the site you mentioned are two extremes of complexity. The malaria short is far beyond what you should expect for the money and time frame you have specified. The binding event example is something that could could easily fall within your time/budget considerations but is uninteresting visually. Do you have a firm idea of what you want your animations to look like and what story needs to be told (even in technical animations, a "story" is necessary if only to define the progress of the sequences)? If not, it's nearly impossible to judge whether or not your expectations are too high. If not, your budget and time frame may not cover the conceptual development necessary before launching an animation project of this nature.

How familiar are you with Blender? If you are new to the application, or worse, new to 3D modeling and animation in general (this wasn't specified), a few months to learn and produce what you seem to be expecting is unlikely to produce satisfactory results.
This is pretty much true regardless of the application used, btw. Learning curves can be deep.

"...probably less work, actually." Sorry, but this is just wishful thinking. Every animation project (that isn't just playing around with software) is more complex than originally imagined. That's why pre-planning the look and story is so valuable, it allows for more efficient use of time actually animating, which is always at a premium.

To sum up, I see no reason why Blender could not be used to produce visualizations of molecular technology. I do see a number of possible pitfalls in accomplishing your goals within the time and budget you've described, but without clearer information about specifics, it's really not possible to say for sure whether it's feasible, regardless of software used.

Here are some questions you could answer more specifically:
-- How many sequences are required? Consider a "sequence" as a collection of scenes that deliver a specific mesage or information content.
-- How long do you anticipate each sequence to be?
-- Are there storyboards?
-- How many individual models will need to be constructed and approved prior to actual animation?
-- Do you anticipate any unusual visual effects, such as depictions of energy (e.g. a glow effect) or complex morphing?

Again, this response is intended to be useful, if only to provide some practical grounding to your expectations. I think the project sounds quite interesting.

[oxonian]

Thanks for the helpful remarks. Here is a bit more info about the kind of animations we are looking for.

We will probably want about four short animations, as outlined below. For the ones involving molecular processes, we could just have a 'ball and stick' model for the molecules, or we could use something a bit more 'realistic' like an electronic charge distribution derived from our numerical research. But since the audience is basically the public we can keep it simple (remember these animations are to run on a plasma screen as part of an exhibit at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition at the end of June -- quite soon!). Some still images that show the kind of models we _could_ opt for are the later ones on the (defunct) webpage
http://www.nanotech.org/?path=Media/sResources/Photo/sLibrary/Molecular/sImages .

(1) The first thing we would want to show is the formation and distillation of "nitrogen endohedral fullerenes" -- these are cool molecules that are basically C60 (the famous buckyball molecule) with a single atom of nitrogen trapped inside. We write it as N@C60. The way we make it is:
(a) we have an apparatus where a crucible of fullerene power is heated, so that something like a vapour of C60 comes off. Then this vapour is hit by a stream of fast moving (ionised) nitrogen atoms. Most of the nitrogen misses the C60 molecules, and some hit and smash them up, but sometimes a nitrogen atom gets trapped inside. After a capture you could imagine the C60 molecule vibrating frantically and then settling down. In the CGI illustration, what might be really cool is to start from an external view of the apparatus (basically a silver metal vacuum chamber with an extra widget on the side that is the ion gun) and then zoom inside to see the process happening.
(b) It might also be fun to show the process of separating the N@C60 from the empty C60, since this is actually the hard part experimentally. This is done by passing the whole lot through an "HPLC column" which is basically a glass cylinder filled with a certain molecule that has an affinity for C60 and therefore slows it down -- but the N@C60 is slowed down more and thus the N@C60 molecules end up in a different region.

(2) Very quick animation showing the making of "pea pod" nanotubes using our N@C60 from (1) as the "peas". These pea pod nanotubes are just tiny (1 nm diameter) hollow tubes, into which a series of buckyballs get drawn because it is energetically favourable for them to be inside. Basically they stick to the outside of the tube first, and can move around on the outer surface, until they happen to get near the 'mouth' and then they are 'sucked' in.

(3) Another quick animation showing (something like...) a peapod nanotube getting stuck to the surface of a block of material, and then metalic gates being laid down at the ends to form a device.

(4) A more substantial animation, which we would need to think through carefully, that attempts to get across the idea of quantum computing taking place inside such a peapod nanotube. Basically the internal state of each N@C60 molecule represents one quantum bit, or qubit, of information. Then we apply pulses of microwave energy and this makes the states spread out and mix.

These 4 short pieces tell the story of the construction about operation of a molecular device. The whole thing might be, say, 4 mins long.

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