Can I Create a Waving Cilium Sequence with Software?

[DaveC426913]

I wish to create a sequence of 2D still frames of a waving cilium in a confined space.

I know there's software out there that can do it. I don't know if there's anything free. Or if anyone would be willing to render it for me. It's pretty simple.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

I would just grab a drawing of a sine wave and nudge it to the right one pixel for each frame of the animation. http://www.getpaint.net/" is an awesome little video editing package that I believe will let you import each image in the sequence as a video frame. (Both free.)

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[DaveC426913]

Sorry, I haven't been clear. I'm a pretty good artist and do a mean PhotoShop and even studied animation in college, so if it could be done by hand, I'm the one to do it.

But it's not enough...

Aw heck, I can't even begin to describe it... Find a thousand words-worth attached.

The flow in my sketches isn't smooth enough. I'm having to balance several elements such as the consistent curvature of the cilium and the volume of fluid it contains with the constraints of the walls.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Your attachments haven't come through yet. But reading between the lines, are you saying you want to generate this from a 3D raytraced model, maybe? If so, http://www.povray.org/" is a popular free tool for that. Between that and VirtualDub you could put together an animation.

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[DaveC426913]

Your attachments haven't come through yet. But reading between the lines, are you saying you want to generate this from a 3D raytraced model, maybe? If so, http://www.povray.org/" is a popular free tool for that. Between that and VirtualDub you could put together an animation.

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No, 2D simple is fine. In fact, all I need is the shape; I could polish it from there.

I'll see if I can bump the approval for the images.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Oh, I see. You need it to sort of slither around inside the confined space? Yeah, I would think that the tough thing is to simulate the tension and the constraint on the maximum curvature.

I'm entirely amateur at doing this stuff on the cheap so I'm not familiar with the professional tools that might do this. If you can retouch the images I'd almost say get a camcorder and “rent” a snake from a pet shop and build a scale model. Then you'd get to sincerely add “no animals were harmed in the making of this animation” in the credits.

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[hypnagogue]

If you think you can model the dynamics mathematically, and if you have access to Matlab, then you could draw the frames for the basic animation using http://psychtoolbox.org/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage and copy them to images on disk for further editing.