Looking at what lies beneath the skin of the human body in a drawing or image is always a revealing activity. It unravels not only our marvelous organic functioning, but also triggers questions both physical and metaphysical. Harnessing WebGL technology, Zygote Body is a 3D viewer of the human body built on the now-defunct Google Body and its open source code. It offers the same functions, with the added benefit of being a living project.
There was a time when a pesky, yet persistent encyclopedia salesman would knock on your door and dazzle your parents with a pitch about the knowledge they could access through their expensive, magical book. Seeing your neighbor witness you acquiring those volumes on the human body filled you with pride (and her with envy), even if you were paying for them in over 30 installments.
I remember opening the volumes and finding the drawn figures of the human body, and perhaps for the first time, accessing our guts, skeleton, and nervous system. I'd touch my elbow while looking at its inner form in the books. All of this can now be done through the same browser, without any salesmen, by entering a URL like that of Zygote Body, the 3D viewer of the human body that Google employees created in their 'free time'.
Zygote Body, the 3D viewer of the human body
Zygote Body displays the human body in a three-dimensional design with different layers for each of our systems. First, you have a male or female figure; then you can move the slider to indicate that you want to see the muscular system, nervous system, circulatory system, etc. These changes happen gradually using a transparency system inherent to WebGL technology.
If you want to focus on a specific organ or group of organs, you can do so by clicking on them, but it's a pity that it only shows their names (in English) without a link to learn more about them, at least on Wikipedia. The app also has a search box and a usage guide. The 3D human figures can be rotated in all directions and zoomed in or out.
The basic service is completely free. That means you can explore the human body, male or female, with total freedom. The navigation system of the free version is a bit tricky interface-wise, but you have a search box to make things easier.
The Premium plan costs four dollars per month and grants access to pins, annotations, creating and saving scenes, and creating quizzes, which are very useful for academic environments. The professional plan, which costs around ninety-eight dollars per month, also allows you to create and use royalty-free images. In other words, it's suitable for people who need to use Zygote's resources commercially. All commercial plans come with a seven-day free trial.
Like Google Body, its predecessor, Zygote Body is available to be used from browsers with WebGL support, such as Chrome and Firefox, among others.
Zygote Body
