Role: Team Lead and Storyboard Artist.
I was tasked with creating the most detailed and scientifically accurate animation of the flagellar motor to date.
The project required reviewing dozens of primary research papers and integrating structural information from cryo-electron tomography, cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography, and computational models. Using published structural data and PDB files, I reconstructed and animated the motor in Houdini while working through incomplete and sometimes conflicting biological hypotheses.
In addition to leading the scientific visualization effort, I assembled and supervised a small team of technical artists and computer science students. Together, we developed custom HDAs, established a USD-based production pipeline, and created tools to streamline asset assembly and rendering. I also contributed directly to tool development, look development, rendering, and the creation of particle and volumetric effects.
Here are two of the HDAs I created.
The first is a Chi Rotation Tool. It takes a PDB as input and outputs an animated PDB with each side chain rotating randomly. The speed and rotation range are fully adjustable.
The second is a Protein Folding Tool. Although other team members had already developed more detailed folding tools, new structural data revealed that the first residues of the domain remained attached to the assembled portion of the channel while the rest of the emerging protein continued to exit and fold. To accurately represent this behavior, I developed a new tool optimized for both flexibility and efficiency. As shown here, it produces a folding motion that closely resembles the behavior of a real biomolecule.