Finally ugraded to Bryce5 (from 4). The enclosed manual was a dissapointment. I was expecting something thick and extensive. Nevertheless.. is it possible to do boolean operations with metaballs? I made a quick try but didn't succeed.

No metas don't boolean with other objects, you can create negative metas by pressing alt when creating a metaball (I think it's alt anyway)

but do they boolean with each other?

Bazze, metas automatically work together, they create a surface over a group of metaballs. If metas are grouped, they don't interact with other groups, the pos/neg attributes in the group don't have any effect, hence the need for the negative metaball. sorry should have been shift-click not alt for a negative meta.

Ok I've created some metas, here's the wireframe, the five on the left are ungrouped, the five on the right are separated into two groups. the 5th ball stuck on the side of each group is a negative meta created using shift click. I've used different textures on the metas because it can create some interesting effects

thanks Gog. I think I got it. Apparently a metaball created by shift clicking isn't the same think as a metaball set to be a negative object in the object settings

Ok, here's the rendered version, as you noted, the shift-click meta's act differrently, also note that the metas within each group on the right interact, but the two groups don't.

Aye, Bazze, as far as I know, Metabals with a Negative Bolean attribute (as opposed to the shift-create-style) have no negative or positive effects? I could be wrong...