Post Here Your Plugins

#161

no problem…i was just joking around…ignore my post bud :thumbsup:

#162

Science man, science! I know meatball was a joke, but for others new to the world of cell biology, I will explain the significance of that little blob.
In particular, this series of plugins is designed for animators and illustrators specializing in molecular and cellular biology or for scientists dabbling in animation. The protein Flip shows in his screengrab is crambin which is the poster child, or “hello world” of computational biology. Proteins, and molecules in general, come in all shapes and sizes as indicated by the famous illustrations of David Goodsell. http://www.pdb.org/pdb/explore/motm.do Once you start to work with them, you appreciate the tremendous diversity, how function is indicated by form, and how much more strange real life can be when compared to imagined alien worlds. This screengrab shows a more recognizable molecule, B-form DNA, I imported with PDB to Surface (rendered with Base80’s favorite color scheme to highlight the two (5’ to 3’ and 3’ to 5’) strands):

This is not a ladder twisted to some random parameter, as seen in any given forensics TV drama, but an Angstrom-accurate representation of ideal (theoretical) Watson and Crick base-paired DNA generated computationally with Quanta by Robert Tan- a rotating shot of a ladder representation of this very model as rendered in the software package “Ribbons” by Mike Carson, was flashed on the screen in the first Jurassic Park movie circa 1992.
I’ve posted a couple of my ancient animations of proteins in action along with some very terse experiments on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/grahamj21#g/u
specifically:
http://www.youtube.com/user/grahamj21#p/u/45/4AnPVuzF7CA
and
http://www.youtube.com/user/grahamj21#p/u/53/PjdPTY1wHdQ
Most of these are dry for CGsociety standards because they are just short movies used in classrooms to teach college students about biology and have corresponding budgets, but these research intensive clips have been the source of reference and inspiration for more recent, relatively high budget movies like the “Inner Life of the Cell” by Harvard/XVIVO. http://www.studiodaily.com/main/searchlist/6850.html While this is still not a hollywood caliber movie, and it bears a lot of scientific inaccuracy, it did prove to be a big step towards getting the general public or non-biology students interested in this important and fascinating subject matter, which ultimately leads to more government funding for basic scientific research.
A major aim of my PhD work is to provide tools that will make it easier for professional animators to access this type of data as a starting point or at least as a reference for their model building (as well as rigging and a variety of dynamics simulations in our soon to be released plugin) in an effort to improve the public face of science… again, in this case, fact is both stranger and more riveting than fiction, and every day, science uncovers more about how these little beasts made of atoms function and interact as collections of biological nano-machines to make our cells, our tissues, our organs, our bodies, and ultimately our societies function!
Hope this helps- Cheers,
Graham

#163

pasta with meatballs then? :shrug: :blush:

::and before anyone dives in with the flames…it was a flippant comment…i am actually interested in this…bygones…
so thankie for the backgrounder…i’m curious to have a go at this import process and the render side…i’m not digging the metaball skin and mentioned the speed part to remo…we’ll see if he responds…from a purely visual side of things fact is often times stranger than fiction and there is load of interest purely from an artistic point of view…so no surprise those with medical backgrounds would be taking a look…
if i wanted to import something transgenic what would i look for btw?

#164

Transfer of a gene from one species to another…
Short answer: One way, at the molecular level, is to go to pdb.org then type ‘trangenic’ into the search field. Check out results here: trangenicPDB

No worries, I’m really glad you made the meatball joke (and yes, I know and appreciate that it was a joke), but it reminded that most of the world does view these blobs as… blobs, so I just wanted to clarify for any future animators turned science animators the importance of how and why the blobs differ.

Long answer:
As for transgenic- before I go off on a boring rant, most of what I’m about to describe is beautifully visualized and soundtracked by the worlds’ greatest molecular animator Drew Berry and his sound guy Francois Tetaz. DNA packaging starts around 1:20 in the Body Code movie, DNA replication at ~2:55, transcription at 3:50, and translation at 5:10 on the following page. (This leads to an interesting story about a disease, and there are fascinating facts and more details about DNA at 7:45):
http://www.wehi.edu.au/education/wehi-tv/

Clear throat and start again- As for transgenic- an isolated protein molecule or DNA strand wouldn’t look very interesting at this level- one blob slightly different than another blob, or more of some blob(s) or less of another than there used to be before the gene transfer. DNA looks more or less the same to humans from one gene to the next- just a bunch of Adenines, Thymines, Guanines, and Cytosines strung together in varied orders. Genes are enormous- there are only 24 base pairs in the previous posted image, 3 base pairs code for one amino acid, and a typical protein in your body has several hundred or even thousands of amino acids, plus lots of “junk” DNA in and around the gene. DNA is wrapped about tiny cylinders inside of eukaryotic cells to help keep it organized for easier packaging and to make it inaccessible to “transcription” machinery that initiates the protein production process (See movie above!)
The effects of the “transgene” in the host cell/organism, or phenotype, are the interesting part- e.g., at extremes we have seen green glowing rabbits Alba the glowing bunny or questionably disturbing GMO crops Monsanto. Such phenotypes are the results of genes being added or subtracted, turned on or off, etc., sometimes naturally, sometimes via human manipulation that result in signaling cascades where an otherwise small/subtle event gets amplified multifold. Though genetics are not directly related and far more complex, the best analogy I can think of for this is Drew Berry’s movie showing Signal Transduction leading to cell death that can be triggered by a single signal from the cell surface (much the way a single match can initiate a forest fire)… not a transgenic effect, but a great way to tell a similarly complex and molecularly related story. Apoptosis
Most importantly, this goes a long way towards implying how random stochastic motion amongst objects that bear increased probabilities for interaction (particular arrangements of atoms) as guided by the laws of thermodynamics can lead to complicated outcomes for other molecules, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, and organisms.

If you find the above sentence “unbelievable”, check out my Principle Investigator, Art Olson’s amazing tangible model, the self assembling plastic virus

Wow, I should go home instead of vomiting more words all over this thread.
Cheers,
Graham

#165

good stuff…unfortunately we posted in a plugins thread and created a discussion…sorry to all those getting plugin updates to this thread.

some very interesting areas here…definitely something i’m going to investigate further thanks for the links and the noob backgrounder btw.
there are a few medical illustrators on this c4d forum…joeld springs to mind but there are definitely some others who are using c4d with some lovely results…might be worth you starting up a separate thread anyway in the main c4d forum and seeing if we can create some more discussion around this area of c4d usage. :beer:

#166

Thanks for this Graham! I havent tried your plugin yet, but it looks like it could be useful. I am glad to see finally some helpers being developed for c4d. Its a field that really interests me but I have limited experience in.

I absolutely love Drew Barry’s work, I’ve been aware with him for awhile and I also think he is the gold standard currently in bio-medical visualization.

Nick Woolridge sometimes haunts this board and he’s a professor at uToronto’s medical imaging school and a big c4d guy. Also Joel Dubin is a excellent c4d medical animator. i’d love to see this tool evolve more - these guys are down in the trenches and could probably give you really good feedback.

EDIT: Ah flingster you’re too fast I didn’t mean to repeat what you just said about Joel.

#167

Hi Johan and Flingster,
Yeah, sorry about the loquacious posting on this board. I’m new to forums in general and not familiar with the etiquette- this all seems related to the plugin I posted, but is definitely a discussion well beyond the nuts and bolts. Is it possible for us, as posters, to move these entries?
I know Nick Woolridge well. He is now the director of that UToronto program and a brilliant and helpful individual! His students create the finest animations in our niche industry. We are members of an Association of Medical Illustrators and he often brings knowledge from this CGsociety forum over to our members little Medical C4D Listserve. It would be good to start a new topic in the main forum, outside of Cinema 4D about Scientific CG, and perhaps another inside of C4D for specific questions. I’ll see if Nick knows how to get that started.

#168

Hola mates,

another very cool helper for Win user.
You will find further information under ->

http://www.smart-page.net/smarttexpath/

Have fun!

The Flip

P.s.: we have now a donationbutton-feel free to use. :slight_smile:

#169

Hi
I did a little Xpresso that gives c4d camera constant 2pt perspective.
It uses a target object and handels much better then the one suplied by maxon.
I dont have a site to put it in so if some one here wants to help with it i can send the file.
I dont want credit. this is just my humble return to the net.

#170

SteadyCHAN updated for Cinema R12

Import / Export of chan and txt files

tcastudios -> xfiles

Cheers
Lennart Wåhln - tcastudios

#171

Here you can find new Scripts for creating some helpfull primitives.

http://www.holgerbiebrach.com/?p=1041

#172

Thanks Holger.

I’ve announced it on my site as well.
LINK

Peace,
Rich_Art. :thumbsup:

#173

I like to work in a clean environment. Well, at least in my 3D scenes :wink:
This means that, when I create new elements for a scene, sometimes I create a new document just to have a clean start and then I copy/paste the new element to the main scene.
However, sometimes I would prefer to create the new element in the main scene itself, if only I could make all the other elements in the scene disappear momentarily. Also, sometimes I would like to edit a specific element in a scene but I would like to have it isolated while doing so.
I know I can assign the object to a layer and set the layer to Solo mode. But that is not as easy as simply pressing a key or key combination and have my selected object(s) in solo mode and them, pressing the key again, have my scene in full view again.
That is why I created AnSolo. It does just that: the selected objects remain visible and the rest of the scene disappears. Choosing AnSolo again, the view returns to its original state.
In my case, I assigned it the key-combo Shift+S. Check out how easy it is:

www.ruimac.com/movies/AnSolo.mov

I already have a price in mind but I would like to know how much would you guys be willing to pay for such a tool :slight_smile:
Lets call it a… market survey :wink:
Comments are always welcome.

Rui Batista

#174

Hi Rui, there where already two plugins (Solo-button and Solo) but if yours is R12-ready I would like to use yours. I would pay for it. Like I would pay for any plugin as I know its work to make them :wink:
greatings, Holger

#175

I “finished” two new plugins. Not yet for R12 tough.

Transform
This is a tool plugin inspired by the transform tool in Photoshop for example. It has the special ability to change the size parameters of the basic primitive objects and scale these objects non-uniformly. It displays a cage with handles which can be dragged to move, scale, rotate and shear the selection. It also displays four icons which can be clicked to switch between modes. Snapping is supported, meaning the handles snap accordingly.

TimeShift
This is a shader plugin to change the time value for the evaluation of another shader. The main purpose of this plugin is to be able to use the same animated texture several times, at different times without having to create a lot of copies of virtually the same material.

Now it’s time to convert everything to R12 :-/

Btw. i’m thinking about commercialising all of my plugins with the transition to R12. Something like two or three packages, one with shaders, one with modeling tools. Each package for a relatively small amount of money, maybe 30 euros or so.

#176

thanks Michael, always very helpful your plugins. ShearRotateScale was already a very handy tool, I also like this one. I think it would be absolutely more than ok if you´d charge a little bit for your work.

#177

Wow great Plug-ins, again!
Thank you very much for sharing! :slight_smile:

#178

Oh no don’t do that! it will make me a little bit poorer!

#179

The embedded Python Molecular Viewer (ePMV) runs molecular modeling software directly inside of a variety of professional 3D animation applications (hosts), including (and especially :buttrock: ) Cinema 4D, to provide simultaneous access the capabilities that each system offers. Open and manipulate various scientific data formats, for example, protein data bank PDB files, a variety of volumetric data types, chemical models and more.
ePMV Introduction On YouTube

For more information about ePMV (installation, documentation, tutorials, galleries, etc…) please visit the wiki : http://mgldev.scripps.edu/projects/ePMV/wiki

• As of November 11, 2010, the installation procedure has been greatly clarified and simplified and no longer requires command-line interfacing.
• This alpha release is very stable and offers many new features compared to the September 2010 version.
• Versions are available for Mac, Windows, and Linux and currently run in any of 3 hosts (Blender, Cinema 4D, or Maya).

For information on how ePMV may be useful in your daily work, check out the thread I posted: Science Answers: Cellular and Molecular Biology, Proteins, Lipids, DNA, RNA, etc.

This is a massive plugin with a ~15 minute installation procedure. It represents months of hard work from Ludovic Autin to integrate Michel Sanner’s Python Molecular Viewer and other scientific algorithms as generically as possible into professional animation packages and will be well worth your while to learn.
Thank you,
Graham
www.grahamj.com
[vimeo]16734851[/vimeo]

#180

Wow, this looks superb!