Howdy ladies and gents! My first post here is to ask a silly question; Soes anyone know of a good tutorial, or be able to provide a tutorial on modeling and maybe animating DNA, for a school project of mine? Just waiting to see if I get any responses, and please do, I really look forward to the challange of getting my Model on. :-) Thanks for your time! -Catalysta

I played around with my maxversion and checked out, how some sett9ngs look like. But there are just not enough infos in your post. 1: What is this picture EXACTLY for ? There are differences between a backgroundimage, a logo, a mainpresentation or maybe a lifepresentation on a computer. 2: What should it look like, a reference picture would be really great ! It isn't hard to model two rails with a row of lowdetailed segments between it, and put a twist-mod. on it. The animation-thing isn't a problem at all. You don't have to use procedural-creation- animation, using a good mix of moving/rotating animationkeys should bring a good result (I think you hace enough expirience with the most programs (e.g. 3dsmax) to realize that) The textures aren't a problem, too. Since dis-oxyrhibonucleinacid doesn't have a real visible structure, you aren't able to use realistic textures. It will always look like a model. So...like I just told you, plz post a reference image (search for science-related-pages, this isn't our job) or mail it. cya (and sorry, for this bad-written (germantouched-) english), comastalker "the maGGoT"

Howdy Folks, Sorry, I should have mentioned, that I needed this to be in Lightwave. I am a proud Mac user, and if 3d studio max doesn't come out for Mac, it just must be trash! I just want to get a pretty acurate model, I don't care all that much about texturing, I just want to know if there's some way to create a strand of DNA, or better yet, if there's somewhere where someone's posted a tutorial on this. This isn't a big deal, just a little side project! Thanks for your time! -Catalysta

Your best bet would be to find a picture/s of DNA, then use it as reference. You could make some Splines in the shape of the DNA to start with, then use the Rail Extrude tool to make the strands and the rest of the shapes. If you don't know how to use the Rail Extrude tool, these are the basics: 1. Make a spline in the first layer. 2. In the second layer, create a flat disk centered on one of the end point of the spline. 3. Use the Rail Extrude tool. You may need to flip the disk in order for it to follow your spline properly.