Blender Image on the Cover of Science Magazine

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Blender user Felix is a PhD student in physics at Hamburg University, Germany. Not only did Science accept his paper (and his team’s, I presume), but they also picked their illustration to feature on the cover. I don’t have to tell you which software he used to create the image, do I? ;-). Having your work featured in Science is no small feat, so congratulations everyone!


Felix writes:

First, we submit a manuscript for publication, presenting our groundbreaking research. After a manuscript gets accepted (the hard part), they ask you for a picture that might go on the cover. Out of all submissions (~15 to 30, I guess), they pick their favourite. It’s ours, hooray!

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    • dusty

      Well done Felix!! That’s going to look good on any CV!!!

    • Zecc

      I don’t know what that’s supposed to be, but it looks somewhat organic :)
      Anyway, congratulations Felix.

    • http://thinningpictures.googlepages.com/ LoMac

      Hats off to you sir!!

    • Charon

      Click the second link above and you’ll see the whole picture and what is it about.

      Great abstract work!!

    • Boffin Envy

      4 April 2008 – Vol 320 – Issue 5872
      COVER
      Single cobalt atoms (cones) on a stepped platinum substrate (blue), with attached stripes of one atomic layer of cobalt, magnetized up (yellow) or down (red), as imaged by spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy. Recording such images at successive magnetic fields enables measurement of the magnetic properties of individual atoms. See page 82.
      Image: F. Meier et al. (illustration: F. Marczinowski)

      Oh… silly me. I thought it might be the first ever image of what Science itself actually looks like. Watch out for those pointy bits you crazy scientists!

    • MarcoA

      Great work!
      Congratulations!

    • Jens

      Congratulations.

      But… I don’t get it. Was this modelled? Or was the data recorded and rendered with Blender?

    • http://www.nanoscience.de Felix

      Thank you all very much. This is all really exciting for me!!

      I also want to say that the research and the paper was done by my colleagues, while I only did the cover image. I’m working on some other project. So it’s really all their work.

      @Jens: It is recorded data, the topography as well as the “color”, which is actually some electronic property of the surface.

      The flat yellow front and the blue boxes were modelled, of course :)

    • knekke

      Hey, a fellow Blender-user from my Hometown… Congratulations!!!
      How about a Blender user-meeting in Hamburg and have a beer or five ;) ?

    • http://mdm.gnwc.ca/?q=blog Stephen Danic

      Awesome! I love seeing Blender used in Academic environments.

      It would be cool to hook the game engine up to the instruments to do that sort of visualization automatically for every run, in realtime.

    • http://www.nanoscience.de Felix

      Oh, and there was a winking smilie ;-) after “groundbreaking research” in my original post.
      It is a fascinating work by my colleagues but I certainly didn’t want to brag.

      We are all very happy about this. Getting published in Science is very unusual anyway, and now this is the first time someone in our group was lucky and got the cover.

    • http://www.jassarbrush.com Jassar

      Wow! congrats Felix :)
      Will blender become the graphical tool for scientists? I sure hope so!

    • ArtIsLight

      preeeeetty cool!

    • fmarc

      @knekke: sure! Do you know a way to contact each other without throwing our addresses to the spambots? Maybe via the BN user system?

      @Stephen: You are giving me ideas here… must…finish…thesis…must not play with Blender.
      Seriously, it is stronger than me. What goes on with blender right now is so fantastic!

      I feel like some ten years ago, I found, by word-of-mouth, this cool fast motorbike on a neogeo website. And recently, while i’m riding it, somebody is turning it into what feels like an agile spaceship.

    • fmarc

      @Jassar: It certainly is attractive for certain visualization tasks. Most of it is done right out of the software that is used for analysis. And those tools let you do all serious (=lines in a diagram) graphing very well. There, integration with the analysis process is the key, and this will not change. But when it comes to visualization, especially for a broader audience, I think it would be very suitable for others as well.

      Like this amazing example featured on Blendernation a few days ago:
      http://www.blendernation.com/2008/04/09/fish-population-data-visualisation-internships-at-great-northern-way-campus-vancouver/

    • lohborn

      serious congratulations

    • aws357

      After the rodent infestation, they have a researchers nesting at the Blender Foundation ! ! !

      eeeeeek !

    • http://www.pointhappy.com Artkansas

      Well done Felix!

    • http://www.freezingmoon.org Dread Knight

      Whoohoo!

    • http://www.blenderunderground.com Apollos

      Congratulations Felix, well done! =D

    • http://www.ania.xibo.at ania

      Congrats Felix!
      I’m studying physics as well, so I can imagine how good you must feel to be published in Science
      I always had the feeling that the knowledge of blender or other 3d packages can’t be useful for physics, now you teach me something better :)
      Gute Arbeit
      Liebe Grüße
      Ania

    • Alex

      I also have a picture in science magazine.
      Unfortunately it was not picked for the cover, but it still was in the magazine.

      I used Bryce and 3DS max back then, but now I do all my 3D illustrations in Blender.
      SO hopefully next time my work will also be on the cover. :)

      I am a undergraduate physics major, by the way.

    • Alex

      *
      “Science” (November 16, 2007 issue)

    • Woodrow

      great share