If, like us, you are involved with the study of cells and cell biology, or if your work takes inspiration from the organic world, this book is for you. We have written In Silico for the diverse creative community — scientists, artists, media designers, students, and hobbyists — now deeply involved with the living cell as a key to unlocking the complexity of organic matter and a gateway to powerful new understanding of disease. In the scientific area, cell and molecular biologists and their research partners today have little time to spare developing complex computer programs from the ground up. High-end three-dimensional (3D) computer programs like Autodesk Maya provide the busy scientist with a robust, flexible development environment in which state-of-the-art computer methods can be used to analyze, model, and visualize cell data. Equipped with deeply customizable user and application programming interfaces, Maya and other top-tier 3D animation programs afford rapid prototyping of data analysis and models through advanced graphics, physics, and rendering systems. Output capability embraces both crisp numerical data and polished 3D dynamic visualizations of cell physiology. These tools have enough programming flexibility that the working researcher can concentrate on the functional aspects of the data mapping or simulation capability they wish to create.
In the communications field are individuals and groups immersed in the burgeoning marketplace of biocommunications, especially medical and scientific animation. The telling of stories is a human universal, common to all peoples and cultures. The increasingly complex world enabled by science and technology makes the accurate, compelling telling of scientific stories more important than ever. Constantly, animators of medical and scientific subjects are called on to present ever more intricate, unusual phenomena involved in understanding how cells work and what goes wrong with them to cause devastating illnesses like cancer and heart disease. At the same time, the expectations of a media - savvy public for concise, truthful, entertaining visual stories rise even higher. Taking control of a program like Maya can empower the media artist to better interpret and visualize wonderfully intricate cellular phenomena — such as the crowded molecular landscapes of the cell interior, the cell waves coursing through the embryo’s interior, or the skein of blood vessels healing a wound — that would be impractically tedious or impossible to animate by hand.
And too numerous to count, surely, are the artists and citizens everywhere who draw inspiration from biology and the natural world, and who dream of imparting some facet of organic vitality and complexity to their creative work or personal appreciation of nature. The ideas and methods of this book will, we believe, inform and inspire everyone with such interests. Although the focus of our applications is the exciting realm of the living cell, those whose interests embrace other parts of living nature will find the knowledge and techniques they learn here of useful in many different ways.