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vmulligan β Ligand
Published: 2012-05-26 03:32:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 2674; Favourites: 84; Downloads: 100
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Description
An abstract piece that initially started as a test of Joker Martini's cobweb script . The basic geometry and the webs were created in 3ds max 2012, then exported to Maya 2012. The hair on the sphere was generated with Maya, and this was rendered with 3delight for Maya 6.0.6. Additional smoke was created with Apophysis 2.09, and the final image was put together with Adobe Photoshop CS5.1.This image is not in the public domain. You may not use it for any purpose without the express consent of the copyright holder. Image copyright Β© 2012 Vikram K. Mulligan.
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Comments: 49
I dont know aht is this, but this is a amazing picture, the mood and color here is awesome!!!
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Greetings,
Superb image.
Best regards,
Michael C. Turner
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In biochemistry, a ligand is a small molecule, atom, or ion bound by a biological macromolecule. The word comes from the Latin word ligare -- to tie up or to bind. When I saw the finished piece, the sphere looked tied up or bound to me...
(Incidentally, the word has a similar but slightly different meaning in organometallic chemistry.)
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yeah, now I get it, I didn't know that! I had the organometallic one in my mind, you know the ligands in complexes. Thanks!
It's a bit strange for me thinking about atoms and molecules, you know often it's said that atoms (and subatomic particles) are not imaginable in the sense that you can't have a "whole picture" of them because every now and then they show behaviors (wave like behaviors...?)that contradict our common image of what atoms are. It's been bugging me since I was introduced to quantum mechanics. you know when we do theoretical chemistry, and biochemistry, we clearly do have a "picture" or imagination of atoms and molecules, we assign "shapes" to them, we use those shapes to predict their behavior and reactivities (which in a lot of cases turn out to be very accurate), and when we start to look closer, at least from what I've learned (which is very little considering that I haven't still finished my first year 
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Some mysticize the physics a bit too much. It isn't the small-scale particles that are mysterious; it's the large-scale phenomena that we encounter every day that are deceptively simple. There really is no such thing as a "particle" or a "wave": the macro-scale objects that we perceive as solid, discrete billiard balls with well-defined position and momentum, or the waves that we see on water that have properties like wavelength, velocity, and frequency, are really both emergent phenomena which only have these apparent properties to a very good approximation on the large scale. These things have properties (position, momentum, wavelength, frequency, velocity, etc.) that are similar to certain aspects of the fundamental building-blocks of reality, and we borrow from the vocabulary that we use to describe these large-scale objects in describing the small-scale fundamental objects.
The reality is that everything is "wavicles" that are neither particles nor waves, but which have features like the imaginary ideal objects that we call particles and other features like the imaginary ideal phenomena that we call waves. When thinking in terms of objects in space, it's most accurate to think of fundamental particles as probability distributions -- spread-out regions over which there exists some probability of experiencing an interaction with other objects. The electron cloud of a hydrogen atom in its lowest energy state, for example, is a spherically symmetrical distribution of probability density that is densest at the centre and falls off at the edges. As you push further and further inward, closer to the nucleus, you have an ever-growing probability of experiencing an interaction with an electron. There is no reality beyond the observable -- the interaction. The electron has no well-defined position; it's not a point-like particle with some probability of being somewhere, but rather a spread-out thing with some probability of engaging in an interaction at each point in space. The electron is the probability distribution. It is only our experience with objects that resemble what we call "particles" (billiard balls, marbles, etc.) that biases us to expect the electron to be particle-like, and to secretly possess a well-defined position and momentum. The particle-like nature of the macro-scale objects is the illusion, though: their probability distributions are have such precipitous falloffs that it seems to us that they have a well-defined place in space.
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Wow, thanks. Just thanks. I had never heard such a good explanation. especially the part that you say "it's not a point-like particle with some probability of being somewhere, but rather a spread-out thing with some probability of engaging in an interaction at each point in space. The electron is the probability distribution." I had never thought of it that way! thank you very much!
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looks like some sort of pathogen or something. Or a spider's egg.
Which geometry did you make in Max? the lines and sphere, and then add texture on top of like a basic sphere to create the hairball type effect?
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In 3ds max, I created a box and a geosphere, and then used the cobeweb script to make the lines to the sphere. The rest -- the fur on the sphere, the lighting, the atmospheric effect -- was created in Maya.
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Thanks for the link. That's a really cool looking script. I'm going to try it out now
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I've only played with it a bit, but it seems pretty good. It seems like the author is actively developing it, too, which is nice.
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I just tried it and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm going to try again, but it gave me some headaches trying to figure it out yesterday.
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Hmm, that's funny. I found it pretty straightforward -- you run the script, select the pieces of geometry that you want to use to anchor the spider web, and then click generate... What was going wrong?
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yeah I do that and an error appears and says exception error or something.
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I don't know why, But I feel like this is what an atom would look like up close.
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A common misconception. In actuality, atoms look almost exactly like M&Ms, complete with the little "M" painted on. Why this is is a mystery of science.
(Kidding, kidding. Actually, to the extent to which we can talk about what an atom would "look" like [given that they're several orders of magnitude smaller than any visible wavelength of light], this may not be far off. The electron shells of atoms are regions of probability density with no solid boundary, so atoms are "fuzzy" objects [albeit not necessarily "furry" 
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Our science teacher was fired for teaching us that! Get him back! M&M IS the right answer, I knew it!
Joking 
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While that's a perfectly fair artist's image, it's not 100% scientifically accurate. The electrons don't have well-defined pointlike positions in the space around the nucleus until they engage in an interaction which defines their position (and even after such an interaction, the system rapidly reverts back to a sort of asymmetrically-wobbling cloud of probability density governed by the time-dependent SchrΓΆdinger equation). In the absence of external interactions, it really is most accurate to think of an electron in an atom as a (fairly static) cloud of probability density rather than as a particle zipping around.
Interestingly, but for the electrons in s-orbitals, the probability distribution of an electron about the nucleus isn't spherically symmetrical. Here's a chart showing cross-sections through the probability density for different electron orbitals: [link]
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Very evocative , could be micro , of macro , imagible on any scale
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Thanks! Yes, I like the ambiguity.
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Very fascinating. With the tapes around it the sphere looks as if it is taking particles through it veins to become bigger and stronger. And with the lighting and the smoke, the sphere becomes more and more alive to me the longer I am watching it.
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awesome work ! u should try si ICE for this sort of work
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I've played with it a little bit, but I need to learn it better. I find programming languages more intuitive than node-based programming, though, so getting into MEL scripting or Python scripting more might suit me better.
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This is a very strange, surreal, and beautiful piece.
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