creating 3D neurons in culture as seen through a light microscope

Biomedical Communicator Andrew Q Tran offers a three part look at modeling and rendering neurons in Autodesk Maya from reference. Covering simple polygon modeling of the neuron shape against a template, and then shows how to create the dendritic spines along the modeled forms using Maya’s Paint FX.

Andrew walks through the modeling process to create a basic neuron mesh that will have the cel body, axon and dendrites, and uses Paint FX to create the tiny spines along the neuron’s dendrites.