Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=359390

Hi all, this is my boolean/metaball effort for this month's challenge. It was nice to play with Bryce modelling features, those metaballs really rock! In the final one, the ants will be only part of the image, of course, and I'll change the textures 'cuz I want a nature setting. This was rendered to see what it would look at close-up. Not entirely satisfied by it, so I went for "mecha-metal" textures for now. If you want to see a larger, uncompressed version, the link is to my gallery posting. Comments and suggestions welcomed. Stefano

I thought that maybe someone would be curious to see the wireframe mesh. Here it is. S.

Fantastic. Are these animatable.

No, GG, or at least I'm not capable of making them move... by the way, I had some very hard time in making the hiearchies work (in order to "pose" the legs and the various body sections without affecting the model). Does anyone point me to some tut about how hierarchies work in Bryce? (I've read the part about it in RWB4). Thanx again. S.

Them! Them!!! Great modelling, DC!

The legs shouldn't be too hard to animate. Make the origin point for the group visible (in the attributes) and move it to the rotation point. Pick a section on the body the be the "control point", this section will be used to move the whole model. Working from this point outwards link each group to it. For example one leg, we decide to make the center thorax the control point. Link the upper leg to it then the lower leg to the upper leg then the foot to the lower leg. Once everything is linked to move the whole model move the center thorax. to move the leg, move the upper leg (the lower leg and foot will move with it) then work your way out and position the rest. Unfortunately Bryce doesn't have IK, if it did you could just move the foot and the rest would follow, instead we have to work in reverse and move the foot last. Hope that helps.

Thanx a lot Aldaron. This is what I did, but my groups disappear after I create a parent for each one. Is this normal? (Example: I grouped a whole leg, then checked "Show origin handle" and dragged it to the junction, and it's all ok. Then, I linked the lower part of the leg to the next one, thus I had the second part parent to the lower one. And then I proceeded up toward the thorax etc. Did the same with the mid-section and the rear body part and the head.) No problem in doing this but... when I searched for the whole leg group (or other previously made groups, that's it), it wasn't there anymore (and I'm sure I didn't ungroup it!). Is this a normal feature? I know that it's possible, because "parenting" is somewhat a "grouping" with different behaviour... In my scene there will be a whole lot of ants, and I want them to be somewhat "poseable", because I don't want to duplicate the same model/position for each one, and for sure I don't want to model each one from scratch (this single one took me almost two days of my spare time to complete!)... :) Thanx again. Later, Stefano

Linked pieces (in this case the seperate leg parts) cannot be grouped after being linked. You don't need to group the whole leg (unless you don't want the joints to be posable). Each leg part group should have the origin handle moved to it's rotation point then linked. If you group the whole leg only that group could be linked to the thorax and thus move as one piece. Any other questions just ask and I'll try to give an answer.

Very nice.

Thanks for the wire frame! I like to see how others solve problems. Tres

Staggering! The Bryster

Stunning models Stefano, you're doing really great work here. I can't wait to see the finished image. Cat

Thanx to all! :) Aldaron, special thanx for helping me out with hierarchies. Now everything's more clear. When my new PC will arrive, I may try a little animation :) Have a nice day Stefano