PNAS Cover Image

Hi folks,

Maybe some of you know the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
About one year ago I had the honor to design the cover image of their eighth issue of 2014 with Blender :wink: !
(But i forgot to post it on blenderartists.org :no:)

For those who don’t know PNAS:
"PNAS is widely read by researchers, particularly those involved in basic sciences, around the world.
PNAS Online receives over 21 million hits per month.

[…] According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal’s 2013 impact factor is 9.809.
PNAS is the second most cited scientific journal, with nearly 1.4 million citations from 1999 to 2009"

(Source: PNAS on Wikipedia)

Scan of the Issue:


Original Image (downscaled) :


Rendered with Cycles.

Techniques used:

  • Tree generator + curve editing and a boolean modifier for the main blood vessel
  • Particle system for the nanoparticle structure
  • Noise and voronoi textures for structure and color
  • A fake SSS shader for the deep red tumor

Rendering time: 10h with Geforce GTX 660
Resolution: 4960 x 5196 (downscaled for this forum of course)

PNAS Homepage screenshot:


Hope you like it and ask anything in the comments! :eyebrowlift:

PNAS Cover Info

With best regards,

Robert (18) from Germany