Help Needed on Science Friendly Software

[jimmydasaint]

Hi all out there,

I am writing a short summary article on biological molecules etc... for my school and perhaps for the wider community.  I want to make my article exciting by incorporating scientific images. I want to make it more exciting and include images of amino acids etc... but showing each individual atom. Is there animation/image software available for science education purposes? Alternatively, is there low cost software that can help me to bring my article to life?

for example, something like this:

 

Thanks, in advance

[Bufofrog]

Blender is a free open source drawing and animation software.  It is quite good, the learning curve is a bit steep but there is a whole community that uses it and lots of helpful tutorials.

[jimmydasaint]

Thank you Bufofrog.  I will try it out.  How is Corel Draw?

[Ghideon]

Have you sen molview or phet? Maybe build or find molecules you need and take screnshots or export? 

Note, I haven’t tested myself, I just got the links from a contact 

http://molview.org/?cid=297

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/molecule-shapes-basics/latest/molecule-shapes-basics_en.html

[Ghideon]

10 hours ago, jimmydasaint said:

Is there animation/image software available for science education purposes?

I tested Molview just for fun. I took a random compound, Aminoacetic acid, and it produced these two pictures*:

 

*) I selected representation "Van der Waals spheres" and engine "Jmol". 

[jimmydasaint]

Superb - I have to check this out. Thank you. Hope it is royalty free. 

Edited April 22, 2019 by jimmydasaint

[peterwlocke]

there is some good free 3d stuff like tinkercad wich you could screenshot.

[Ghideon]

On 4/22/2019 at 10:13 AM, jimmydasaint said:

Hope it is royalty free

I'm by no means an expert in software licensing, but I checked http://molview.org/license and I find no reason to believe there are royalties (Gnu General Public License).