Advice Needed: 3D Programs for Biological Simulations

[Eagle9]

Good day!
I need your advice in computer graphics
I have been studying and working in Autodesk 3ds Max for years, mainly for my pleasure. Now I want/need to study some new 3D program in CG, however not for just fun but for science. Particularly I need such program that enables showing and simulating biological processes (biopolymers for example, their assembling and etc), that can execute data processing, visualizing and things like them. Which program would you advise me? I have heard that Blender can be used for this purpose, is it correct?

 

[Ibix]

Well, Blender is scriptable in python, so you can write python code to do your science and drive Blender to display it, certainly. I've drawn a few diagrams this way.

Depending on what you want to display and whether you are happy to use python, you might be better served by downloading an OpenGL library for your favourite language and using that.

Those are the two approaches I've used over the years, but I've never done anything heavy-duty with either. I would think Blender would make it easier to make your pictures really pretty and it certainly makes it easy to customise (I used python to generate the objects in my diagrams then manually tweaked colours, lighting and cameras). On the other hand I would think OpenGL would make it simpler to set up exactly what you want to display (you specify your camera frustrum and then you know exactly what volume will be rendered in simple coordinates, for example).

 

[glappkaeft]

I'm not sure it fits you requirements but you should probably look into the Visualization Toolkit (https://vtk.org/)

 

[Eagle9]

Well, Blender is scriptable in python, so you can write python code to do your science and drive Blender to display it, certainly.

Wow, this is great, I am studying Python now

Depending on what you want to display and whether you are happy to use python, you might be better served by downloading an OpenGL library for your favourite language and using that.

And this OpenGL library is compatible with both Python and Blender? Or is it something separate tool?

Those are the two approaches I've used over the years, but I've never done anything heavy-duty with either. I would think Blender would make it easier to make your pictures really pretty and it certainly makes it easy to customise (I used python to generate the objects in my diagrams then manually tweaked colours, lighting and cameras). On the other hand I would think OpenGL would make it simpler to set up exactly what you want to display (you specify your camera frustrum and then you know exactly what volume will be rendered in simple coordinates, for example).

I will learn Python in any case, so if it is compatible for Blender I would use this option. As for OpenGL – I have not used in, never.

I'm not sure it fits you requirements but you should probably look into the Visualization Toolkit (https://vtk.org/)

I visited the Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTK
So, it is a separate program for 3D computer graphics? It is better than Blender?

 

[Ibix]

OpenGL is a low-level library for 3d graphics programming. I don't know without checking, but I imagine Blender is built on top of it. It's available in most languages, I think, definitely including python and Java. Python at least has a library called GLUT which includes convenience functions to make OpenGL easier to use - or so I gather. There may be other options.

 

[glappkaeft]

I visited the Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTK
So, it is a separate program for 3D computer graphics? It is better than Blender?

VTK is not really a traditional program but a SDK for scientific visualization that you interface with using one of many supported programming languages (Python, tcl, Java, C++, etc.). I have never used Blender so I can't compare. There are lots of examples in many languages at https://lorensen.github.io/VTKExamples/site/

 

[FactChecker]

If you can afford the price, it might be worth looking into MATLAB. I am not sure how well it fits your particular use, but you may be able to get some idea of it from this book.

 

[Eagle9]

OpenGL is a low-level library for 3d graphics programming. I don't know without checking, but I imagine Blender is built on top of it. It's available in most languages, I think, definitely including python and Java

So, Blender is "better" than "OpenGL"?

If you can afford the price, it might be worth looking into MATLAB

I study this program now

 

[FactChecker]

OpenGL is a language for those who want to be professional graphics programmers. It is not easy to use it directly to present scientific results. Later versions are much harder to use than earlier versions that are no longer supported.

 

[Eagle9]

OpenGL is a language for those who want to be professional graphics programmers. It is not easy to use it directly to present scientific results. Later versions are much harder to use than earlier versions that are no longer supported.

Thanks so as I understood Blender still is the best option