The HIV virus as understood in 1997
3D Computer-Assisted
Animated Models and Animations

Produced in Softimage, Eddie, and Amazon:
3D Animation:  Texture, Bump, Displacement and Distortion Maps

Note:  we do not currently offer animation.
The Reason
Mr. Luce produced these images in the 1990's
under the aegis of ITC-ACHS at the University of Virgina.

Translucent 3D Heart model with coronary arteries in the LAO position, likened to an angiogram.  This image appeared in CCI's Cases in Cardiology CD-ROM, fully animated in Softimage. © 1996 CardioConcepts, Inc.


           This translucent skull was mapped so as to view internal structures
in a fly-through for first year medical students.

A proprietary model was re-defined for over a month to bring it to neurosurgical level anatomy.
Of course many do not need this level of detail, but the model's useful life-span seems infinite.
Surely medical animators are more imagineering these days, with the speed of better computers--- this unpaid model/film was done on an R4000 chip in an SGI Elan in 1994-5...
now the standard is almost twenty-fold that speed!  Show us what YOU have done in the interim!


Custom texture map applied to a proprietary 3D model.

In other words, a painting is wrapped around a 3D wireframe model.
The painting is distorted on the model as it moves.

At the time, we were negotiating a contract for over 400 anatomical texture maps
with a modelling company.  As a result, now texture maps are often available with the model.
This was merely a demonstration of the power of painted maps
in association with 3D computing, now common.


The protein causing whooping cough was animated--- uncoiling, opening calcium channels and going through the cell membrane to cause disease.  This was produced to support a feature NEW to academia:  animations targeted at grant proposals in basic science.  This concept has caught on in other areas as well, and tape/CD/DVD are now OFTEN submitted as appendices to major grants. 

Yet to be animated (anywhere) is the Brownian movement of the lipid bilayer (seen here as yellow spheres), which moves as fast as 1cm/sec!  Awesome! (Insert challenge to medical animators and cell biologists-- it should look like a breeze wafting over a puddle of gasoline on water!)  At the time this sequence was animated, this was so calculation-intensive as to appear impossible-- (this one is a composited still, but the movie should be done NOW, as many students still think of these events as static.


From a QTVR of the Prostate and pelvis.  This means the model is viewable from any attitude by simply moving the mouse. © 1998 Urologic Multimedia, Inc.
Since this was made, animatable images can be rendered almost in real time!
WHERE are the new images?  Are the animation producers asleep?


 
 

CONTACT the Artist  •  RiverScapes Gallery  •  All FineArt  •  Bio of the Artist
Medical Illustration Commissions  • Medical Illustration

All images ©2002 CALuce, All rights reserved.