Animations.

I have animated Shot001-Shot005, just waiting for final approval from Angus that these look scientifically correct.  The opening shot looked really bland using a straight zoom as detailed in the animatic, so instead I got some inspiration from this impossibly beautiful shot from Inside the Human Body.

I found that the Jiggle Deformer (most evident in Shot002, but not yet included in all shots as I haven’t cached them all yet) helps with the realism and makes the molecules look a bit more lively.

Shot002 relied heavily on the animation of constraints to make the ubiquitin molecules transfer from HDM2 to p53.

Shot003 was great fun and really quick to do, using a Motion Path and the “Side Twist” attribute to produce a forward rolling motion.

Shot005 was a complete nightmare (probably because it was the one shot I hadn’t done enough testing for), and went through several iterations inluding trying to squash it though a lattice, which produced results that were… not quite what I was hoping for.

In the end I used a Spline Rig similar to the one I used for mRNA to give the impression that the protein was “unwinding.” I’ll have to use clever comp and shading techniques to make it look like it’s still the original model.  I’m not totally happy with the final result, but time is ticking so it’ll have to be one of those “fix it in comp” jobs.  Motion blur will go a long way toward achieving this, I suspect.