#Cell Division
I've done this for one of our undergraduate biology labs. Its a bit tedious
but it works. For algal cells took bevelled rectangular cubes and applied a
transparent material to it. The cube had a small sphere representing the
nucleus at its center. I then created another ide cell by copying the first
cell and shrinking it to about half the size. This cell was superimposed on
the original cell but placed at its median. I then duplicated this "half cell"
and placed it side by side to the other "half cell". Now for the trick- You
must make the mat transparent material of the original full sized cell fade to
completely transparent and make the "half cells" start out completely transpar
transparent and fade to half transparent during the aanimations first set of
key frames. Still with me? The result should be two side by s side half cells
which can then grow to the original full sized cell for the next keyframe
sequence. I did this several times to show algal cell growth in chains and in
sheets. In sheets you would have alternating division along the horizontal and
then the vertical axis.
For animal cell division it is a bit harder since you are dividing from single
cell to something like the morula which is like a bunch of g grapes. I do this
sort of thing for a living now specializing in Biology and Chemistry.
Hope this helps. BTW I forgot to mention use the VARY IXP in the materials
editor for making objects fade in and out.
Best!