Dear all,
In a project I am currently involved in, we would like visualize membrane proteins in a membrane bilayer.
Example of bilayer:

Although in Blender the basic building block (the phospholipid) can be made relatively easy with a sphere and two sticks, i was wondering if there is an easy way to create a vesicle from these phospholipids in which the heads of phospholipids are layered on the inside and outside face?
the 3 different ways I would like to use in blender:

I do know how you can create an array, however, is it also possible to curve it in such a way that it forms a sphere?? And is there a trick to disorganize it a little?

Thank in advance for the help!

Best,
Kevin

Nice picture! Always love seeing images of the cellular world.

In addition to the array modifier, there are also some deform modifiers like cast which molds an object to some predefined shapes.

Another technique that may work here is dupliverts - the ability to attach objects to the vertices of a mesh. The mesh then be deformed or animated. Examples of using dupliverts are creating tree leaves and faking flocks of birds.

For randomness, maybe the wave modifier or a noise texture on a mesh with dupliverts.

Dupliverts..... Thanks! that was what i was looking for...
found a nice tutorial on http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Modeling/Objects/Duplication/DupliVerts

again thanks for the quick reply!
Regards,
Kevin