Coronavirus Simulator (Project 6)

For this project, I wrote a Python script for Maya to create a short animation running 10 seconds that features a procedural animation.

Design/Written Description: I tried to recreate coronavirus because I cannot get Cardi B's "cOroNaVirUs!!" out of my head. My (highly unrealistic) coronavirus model is composed of basic polygons: a bunch of red cones pointed towards a white sphere. I wanted the cones to spin around the sphere so that the virus looked... "active" or something. I based the design off of the following picture.

Features:

• The script assigns shaders to the objects in the scene and applies a background color.

• Cones rotate around the central body at varying degrees along the X and Y axes; the diversity in motion keeps the scene interesting by distinguishing one particle from another.

• A UI box pops up and allows users to input the number of viruses that they want to propagate in the scene (default number is 7).

• The virus duplicates itself as many times as the user wants. The script handles this process and randomly re-positions the copies in the scene.

Pictures: The following are some screenshots from my animation.

Note: I manually keyframed the camera, but everything else was done with Python scripting in Maya. I decided to animate the camera because I thought it would be cool to show a zoomed-out view of the scene first before zooming-in on a virus to see its details.