Eye Guy

A quick render of a model my friend made for me.

Blender Tutorial: Binary Double Helix

Combining a mesh of a few vertices and multitude of modifiers (mirror, array, deform, and particle), I was able to create a neat looking DNA strand out of 1's and 0's - a Binary Double Helix or Binary Binary Helix?  This tutorial assumes a lot about your knowledge of Blender.  You should probably be familiar with modifiers, particle system, and nodes.

There are two ways of achieving this that I know of: 1) Using a Screw Modifier 2) Using a Deform Modifier.  There is already a decent video about using a Deform Modifier to create a helix so I won't post another one.  Although, I wouldn't use the shapes that the video suggests but instead use a mirror modifier to create mirrored sides along with an array to create each rung.  I stacked them like this:

1. mirror - for duplicating the other side
2. array - creates the individual rungs
3. deform - twists the strand around the origin
4. array - creates multiple sections...be really cool to set this up in 3's like DNA should be ;)
5. sub surf (if you need it, like if you're using cylinders instead of particles)

Should look something like this photo (the empty box is used for the deform modifier's origin):

After creating the helix, make some 1's and 0's on another layer.  I used a box and a circle mesh to start with because the text meshes tend to have a lot of vertices.  Then add them to a group to be used with the particle system.  In the particle system (also shown in the image below) just get the particles working on a single section; because, currently (Blender 2.66), the modifiers won't work with the particle system until you apply them later.

1. In the Emission section, turn on Vertex and turn off Random.
2. In Render section, turn on Unborn.
3. Turn off the emitter so the vertices or faces don't show up. Unless you want this.
4. Select the new group of 1's and 0's you made.
5. Turn on the Pick Random.

You might have to play with the rotations of the 1's and 0's a bit (pun intended).  Also, use the subdivide to create more vertices and space out the particles how you want.  I made the mistake here of only using 7 bits inside as the rung.  You probably want some multiple of 2 like 8 bits to add that extra coolness or to write something in ASCII or other encoding.

For the cool glow effect I used these two videos (using both blur and glare filters):

1. Blender 2.64 Tutorial: Advanced Particle Trail in Cycles
2. Blender Tutorial: Create a Spaceship Corridor in Blender - Part 2 of 2

Here is a .blend file to help you get started if you need it: dna_binary_1.2.blend