Just to add for organics metaballs are great. Take a look at humorix's gallery for some examples and do a search on this forum for dragonriders of pern and character and you'll see some examples of models made with just metaballs. Also check my gallery, "Seadragon's realm" was pure bryce. The seadragon is all metaballs. The boat is pictured above using boolean, terrains, and metaballs for the curved ropes.