Inside a Fire Ant Colony (3D Model)

Navigating the tunnels and chambers of an actual fire ant colony. This is a 3d scanned model of an aluminum cast of a fire ant colony. In the video you'll first see an animation simulation of running horizontally across the hill of the colony from one end to the other (0:38). Next, the simulation stats at near the original ground surface and travels to the bottom of the colony (1:57). I spent a lot of time running through different parts of the colony when making this video and think this is a good representation of the different structures within the colony.

The surface mound and higher portions of the below ground portion are mostly just tunnels, packed closely together. As you go deeper, the tunnels become a little more spaced out and larger chambers start to emerge.

Keep an eye on the bottom right for a projected map showing the current location within the colony, which switches from above view to side view at different points. Occasionally in the video, I show the location map closer in a split screen view to highlight interesting parts of the colony.

See the other videos on this channel to see the casting process.

Pictures of the aluminum ant colony cast used can be seen here: http://anthillart.com/castings/062

I used program called 3D Slicer to process the scan data (DICOM files) into a model of the ant colony. Then I imported the model into another free program called Blender to make the animations. I don’t know how such amazing software can be free but I appreciate the work they put into the programs and they deserve a shout out.