Since I LOVE their free Drops I would like to know if anyone has tried Meta Form? And is it just for animations or can you use it for making stuff like you can with Drops? Hopefully even easier? Is there for instance a "mirror" function? I can see it has sold some, and I really really WANT it, if it can do what I think it can do, but... reviews anyone? PS: This Meta Form is a meta ball plug-in for Poser Pro Pack and Poser 5, in case you don't know. Available at Daz3D.

I just got it and immediately made a water splash, brought it into Vue and it was awesome. Well worth the cash so far. Marque

Marque, is there a mirror function anywhere? It's one of the biggest "faults" in Drops that you can't make a symmetrical "something". But Drops is free so I'm not REALLY complaining G

...

I don't see a mirror function, haven't dug into it completely yet, but haven't found that. Marque

Does lock up a lot though, probably not using it right. Marque

Hmm :o/ Drops does lock up quite some too. I hope it's not a fault in the program. One would think Daz had tested it to ensure it doesn't lock up all the time. Hmm Good thing they have their money back guarantee if that's the case. No I haven't bought it yet, it's still sitting in my basket while I am making up my mind L

I am curious how it goes with someone who has little time to use/master a new tool. What sort of effects that it good for and what it is not good for. Thanks

I bought it but I was disappointed to find the tutorial wa for Metadrops and not Metaform. I don't have a clue how to use it...but it does make forms like Metadrops (unfortunately mine accidently looked too phallic to share). I played with it for about an hour last night...it didn't lock up but I noticed Poser 5 was grumpy after I closed it out, so I suspect it was drawing on a lot of my computers resources. ernyoka1, if you or anyone else ends up doing a test run of this product and would like to review it for the Renderosity Interactive Magazine, send an email to mag@renderosity.com because I know Dee-Marie, Editor in Chief, would love to hear from you.

What does MetaForm do that Drops doesn't?

Metaform has different non-blob shapes, for one thing, and it can create spray effects. I don't know what else it can do because I can't really figure it out, but it has a lot of potential for creating figures inside of Poser.

I got it for the ability to use the water lava and such, but I'm wondering if it was worth $50 Marque

I've been using MetaForms since the beginning of beta - it is really an amazing product, especially for animators who want to do fountains, waterfalls, volcanos, billowing smoke, explosions and a lot more. The promo images at DAZ just don't do it justice, but maybe they are there to show what someone can do the first day they get it. After you get the hang of it, you can do some very realistic particle based animations, but of course the more complex the effect the longer it takes to process. For example, you can make a single jet stream of water for a fountain in a matter of minutes that will render pretty fast. If you want more realisim, you might need thousands of drops in your fountain spray and various guides and reflectors to channel it and bounce it around, and as the drops fall into a pool they can even make little splashes, ripples or churn up the surface of the receiving pool. That kind of fountain might take quite a while to process. Of course, animation is just ONE use of the product. I personally don't animate that much (but might start because this is just TOO cool) - but I still have many uses for Metaforms as a handy tool for my static scenes. Here are a couple of things I use it for: Outdoor scenes where I need a quick uneven terrain (or to fill in a spot in things like the DNA MicroCosm series) - Metaforms can make beautiful rolling hills, grassy knolls, sandpiles, moon craters etc. in just a few seconds. No more flat ground-planes for me! Organic clutter such as rocks, piles of snow, icicles hanging from a house, cave formations (stalagmites and stalactites) and all sorts of other lumpy things we find in nature. Pools of water with surfaces that can undulate and have multiple ripples - even for static images, when used with P5 materials this is an AWESOME combination. Quickie props and accessories: Here are a few things you can make in less than 60 seconds (faster than you can find them in your archive CDs ;-) - An inner tube for the kids or a life-preserver - a wart for Vicky-hag's nose - a birdbath - a flowerpot - a convincing inflatable raft - a knot in a tree or some massive roots for your existing trees - doggie poop (err, sorry ernyoka1, you might not need that one ;-) - a rubber duckie - chew toys for your pet - use your imagination this is a LONG list. There is NO practical limit as long as you remember that these are MetaForms and not ordinary primitives. What you can NOT make are things that have square edges such as most man-made architectural objects. But as long as the shape you want is roundish or irregular, then give Metaforms a try! Remember, MetaForms not only makes the meshes, but it UV maps them and applies textures and materials as well! No need to use any external programs to create an object from start to finish. As for stability, I've been using mine for about 6 months and with the drops program I had 2 lock-ups in much earlier betas but I'm not sure it wasn't my fault because I couldn't repeat the problem. With the MetaForms program I've never experienced any problems on Win98-se2 or on Win-XPh. I guess you can tell that I like the program ;-) but it may not be for everyone - it will probably be most appreciated by those of us who like to "tinker" with our stuff.

I'd like to see some more sample animations before I decide to purchase ... particularly water animations that make use of P5's refractive shader, or fire/smoke effects.

has anyone made humanoid or animal/alien figures with it yet?

ernyoka1 made a turkey with metadrops. It was pretty cute.

So do a tutorial ronstuff so the rest of us can get to at least the point of the pics on the Daz site because I have printed out the pdf, and I'm just not getting the small sprays for a fountain to work right. Any clues before I give it up and get a refund? Thanks, Marque

Yeah, my spray looks like it would hurt someone if it landed on them...not really water looking at all.

Yup, that's my problem way too big and not enough. Marque

Yes I have used Drops to make characters. Both Birdy and Sheepie are made that way (with minor touch ups in other programs, for face morphs and such) Hmm I guess with Daz' refund policy there's nothing lost by trying it out... I'll let you know if I can figure it out then :o)

Can these shapes be exported in some form? Like .obj files or something? What I'm asking is, is it possible to use this as a modelling program and build stuff, then poserize it? mac

X-posted with ernyoka. I think she just answered my question. Thanks. mac

PS Anyone have a link for the original freebie one? I wouldn't mind trying before buying. mac Edit, edit, my kingdom for an edit button!

Attached Link: http://www.weirdjuice3d.com/

Thanks a bunch, dialyn. I'll give it a whirl. mac

Does this work similar to the metaballs in Bryce5?

I was looking at that as well. Can those of you who have used this thing provide some static render samples? I would really like to see what ronstuff has created with it.

I am very curious about water animation and export to Vue. Is it possible to make a waterfall, animate it, and export it to Vue by use of Mover, and animate it in Vue? Thank you Orio

.

Since ronstuff has been using it for 6 months I can't believe he hasn't offered to show some examples of what he has done with it. So far the water I've done exported to vue but the drops are way too big. I was excited that I could do it, (haven't done and animation yet), but I'm still trying to get the drops smaller. Marque

If anyone figures out how to do an animation please let me in on it. Thanks, Marque

I've used the free progam a little bit. At first it didn't work right at all. Couldn't resize anything, rotate, etc. Then I removed the P4pp.pyd from the Weird Juice python folder, leaving the P5.pyd, and it now works as it should :) In the readme they talk about a "memory leak" in the free program that can slow things down. Here's what they say: "In both ProPack and P5 there are memory leaks in the interface between the Drops and Poser when new geometries are created. This situation is worse when extremely complex scenes are created with numerous Metaballs, or when long animations are created when Surfacing is active. Monitoring this can be carried out using the Windows Task Manager and observing the value in the "VM Size" column of the process tab. This column can be made visible with the View->Select Columns menu option of the task manager. If the memory leak is becoming excessive, it can removed by saving and restarting Poser. If the memory leak is affecting performance during the rendering of animations, consider rendering shorter animation sequences with restarts between them and splicing the final output in third party video editing utilities." Since I haven't used it enough to make anything complicated, that has not been a problem. However, I am concerned if the same issue exists in Meta Form. I think I'm going to email them and see if it is. I really would like to see some image samples!!!

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..

OK I found out how to make the water drops (or whatever drops smaller) - there's a dial for their size. But I can't gfor the life of me find a way to assign varoius colours/textures to various things in the same scene. Only by exporting some of it and reimporting it as an obj. Tried to look in the pdf for it, but was only more confuzzled. It does run rather unstable on my computer as well, it has locked up Poser a few times. It MAY be becourse I'm a little low on Ram, I dunno. Same with PPP and P5. I'm still trying to figure it out though. Ronstuff, can you please give us some tips and trix? :o)

I've downloaded twice from the link dialyn provided, (which is their own site), and both d/ls have been corrupt - 342kb instead of 400 and something kb. Anywehere else I can get it? mac

PS Ernyoka - I remember ronstuff posting pics when this first came out. Try a search for 'metaballs'. There may be some tips in the original thread. mac

You could contact WeirdJuice so that they are alerted to the problems with their downloads: contact@weirdjuice3d.com One warning, Cheryl (who responds) is working half time because she just had a baby. I got a response within 24 hours, which I thought was great considering the time situation and her considerable distraction. They are very nice and I think they would want to know that there are problems.

dialyn, Thanks for the info. I already mailed them earlier. I figured if it didn't work for me, it maybe wasn't working for other people. mac

It hasn't crashed on me yet, but then I don't do enough to make it crash. That looks very cool.

Got a reply from Bill at Meta Forms. I don't think he would mind and copying his comments and excerpts from the readme he sent me,is easier than trying to paraphrase him. I wrote inquiring about the memory issue: "MetaForm and Drops share a common code base but MetaForm is a slightly later development of the code. We did in fact manage to bypass the memory leak problems for the Poser 5 version, however, the new features included in MetaForm also exposed an additional problem with the ProPack version that as yet remains unresolved, and for which we had to add some additional workflow features and advice in order to ensure that ProPack users could also beneifit from the full feature set." A couple of items from the readme document he sent me that might be useful: "Extremely complex surface calculations and simulations may require a large amount of memory. For complex work, we recommend 1GB memory." The model you created might fall into that category ernyoka1. "The interface used by MetaForm creates memory leaks when surface geometries are automatically recalculated (ProPack version). To avoid the memory leak issue we recommend disabling surfacing when changing frames and using the Render Image Sequence functionality to create animations. Generally non-animators can ignore this issue." "When operating under Poser 5, an alternative mechanism is used to generate surface geometries which avoids the memory leak problems of the ProPack functionality. However, this mechanism does create a noticeble slowdown in performance. The "Fast Geometry" switch can be used to re-enable the ProPack functionality, but this exposes the same memory leaks. Again this problem is only associated with the Poser Make Movie functionality and frame changes while surfacing is active, and should not concern non-animators. Avoidance by disabling surfacing while changing frames and using the plug-in's Render Image Sequence functionality in the Options panel is recommended." "This is a severe bug that has been observed in ProPack only. During animation and image sequence generation (using the Make Movie function) when Surfacing is active, the application freezes. The more complex the surfacing, the earlier in the sequence this occurs." There are some other issue identified as well that seem more UI related. However, you may be right ernyoka1.....this is apparently an early release at best. You might want to email and find out if updates are pending and if they will be free :) I'm going to wait until l see some other images before making any decisions on this. Your cave is great, but I am especially interested in creating life like water, exploding objects and fire for fire beathing dragons! :)

Well it seems to me that this is not only a beta but also that this beta isn't suited for Pro Pack >:o( I will expect ANY updates of this to be free, and honestly I think either Daz or Weird Juice should seriously reconsider their pricing for this beta. $50 (or 70 without the initial discount) is IMO rather cheeky for a non-finished plug-in. Hrmpf. Well anyway, the cave is now available on my Homepage, in both a P4 and P5 version (different mapping of the obj, since P5 can use procedural materials)

I know I shouldn't say this, but what the heck :) Maybe they noted that CL put out a beta and charged early buyers $300+ for it and figured $50 was a real deal :) Ha! My appologies to those who purchased P5 when it first came out :) I'm going to grab your cave.....and stick with the free Meta Balls program for now :)

Hello Ernyoka1 I do not intend to reply to all forum threads but it seems that you are extremely dissatisfied with MetaForms and I felt that, under the circumstances, I would try to clear one or two things up for you. Firstly, I would like to make it absolutely clear that MetaForms is NOT a beta. The product has been twelve months in development and eight months in testing, being tested by numerous, independant testers as well as extensive testings done inhouse and of course at DAZ3D. We would not even consider releasing a product at beta stage whether it be for $50 or for $5. Of course we are well aware of the ProPack issues and have spent many of the last six months looking into ways which might help that situation. The solutions to the problem are properly highlighted in the readme file and I would advise you to re-read these to see if it helps with your specific problems. The propack memory leak and interface issues are a problem within Poser itself and not within MetaForm. We can only investigate ways of by-passing these problems but we can't actually fix them. We did consider delaying the release for ProPack users until a better solution had been found, however we have spent many hundreds of hours looking for alternatives and workflow appeared to be the only solution. Under those circumstances there were no guarantees that any other solution could be found and therefore the product would either have not been released for ProPack Users or it would have been released in its current form anyway. As it stands, the workflow practices, while far from ideal, do allow ProPack Users to benefit from the additional functionality that MetaForm gives to Poser. These issues have not been forgotten however and if we do ever manage to come up with a better solution then of course it will be available free of charge to all ProPack users. Unfortunately, in your threads you have not said specifically where you are experiencing these problems and therefore I cannot give you a specific answer to them now but I would recommend that you contact us by email telling us in more detail what you are doing etc and we will see what we can do to help alleviate these. We do have in-house technical suppport and aim to answer all emails within 24 hours of recieving them (please remember the time differences between the UK and US). I noticed in your Daz thread that the problems you have identified are those ProPack ones which are already addressed in the Readme file. We do consider Poser5 to be 100% stable and so far have had no customer feedback to the contrary. We would very much appreciate being informed of the details of your problems within P5. If any other ProPack users are experiencing the same problems then I would ask that you contact us directly so that we can investigate the matter further. In the meantime, Ernyoka1, please contact us and we will try to sort through your problems but if you are still dissatisfied then you are welcome to a full refund for the product from Daz. Cheryl Weird Juice Software

I have noticed that it seems to work fine in Poser 5. And I must admit that I didn't read the Readme before I purchased it. Since Daz normally doesn't support Poser 5 specific products I simply hadn't thought about the possibility that it would require P5, since it was listed as Pro Pack/Poser 5. Also, I have used Drops solely in Poser 4 Pro Pack and I loved it (and still do) The small issues it had was ok with me since it was free :o) I have been waiting for Meta Form since I first saw it mentioned, and now, after I have used it in Poser 5 for a few days I can see that IF I was to turn it in and request a refund, I would MISS it. So I guess I'm hooked on it anyway L I still consider the Poser Pro Pack "version" to be too buggy to be really usefull. Whether or not it's Poser's fault. The fact is that if I hadn't had Poser 5 as well as Pro Pack, the program would have been useless. It may very well be something on my computer, for instance my lack of Ram. However where I live, Ram is EXPENSIVE so buying 1 GB is simply out of the question. It would cost me over 100$, which I simply can't afford at the moment. :o) But that's not YOUR fault. Soooo All in all I am steadily starting to like that program more and more. There are still a lot I can't figure out how to do, so I'm eagerly waiting for the step-by-step manual. I do know how to make smaller drops, but the materials really confuses me. But again, I'm not a "RTFM" peep, I'm a "press this button and let's see what happens" peep. so most likely If I read the manual really thoroughly I might find the answer :o) And in the meantime I've made yet another cave. That's something I couldn't possibly have done with Drops :o) So you see, I am not dissin the program as such, I'm just not sure it should have been released as Pro Pack compliant when it works SO MUCH BETTER in Poser 5 :o)

Well....that is good news ernyoka1!:) Since I only have Poser 5, it may be a good buy for me. I'm still waiting for someone who has worked with it extensively to post some cool images (especially of water, fire, etc.)

In a rare move for me, I decided to be an early adopter and I bought MetaForm over the weekend and spent a fair bit of time playing with it. I don't have any images to show yet, but I can share some initial impressions. I was pretty skeptical about it when I first started seeing promos for MetaForm, but now I have it I'm glad I bought it. I think $50 is a very reasonable price for something this good. I'd hesitate to pay $70, but that's mostly because I don't think I'll use it enough to justify spending that much, not because I don't think it's worth that amount. I'm using it in P5 and I have 1 gig of RAM. Animating metaballs is a resource intensive business and whether you want to do it in Poser or some other software you're going to need a powerful computer. For still pics, the resouces are not such a big issue. I haven't had any crashes or lockups. The documentation is clear and well written. I strongly recommend working your way through it, trying each technique before you try ot use MetaForm on your own. The only section I haven't read is the texturing section (because it's all about UV mapped texturing and I'd rather use procedural). What I've been able to do so far: Cover Vicki in mud or slime and get her to wade through it with lots of it clinging to her legs. (very quick to do) Make body coating models for figures (this would be a really easy way to make a catsuit model for example, although if I understand it right, it builds a catsuit inside the figure as well as one outside) (quick and pretty easy if you've read the manual) Animate dripping slime (a fair bit of effort required, but fairly straightforward to do). Animate flows - eg water from a pipe. (not hard, but lots of waiting and trying different settings involved) Animation is always an excersize that requires patience. You'll need a lot of it to animate particle flows. To make them look good, you have to do a lot of resource hungry things, like using large numbers of particles and giving them a long lifetime. Recalculating the surface for every frame takes a while. Things I haven't tried but feel confident about based on experience so far: Animating smoke and flame (I'm not yet sure how easy it will be to get the textures looking good - with P5 animatable materials it should be possible). Animating ripples on the surface of water. One thing I was really hoping for was to be able to watch a liquid surface react to a figure walking through it, with ripples and splashes. I believe this might be possible with MetaForm (by using a particle emitter to fill a pool with particles and then setting the figure to be a particle deflector) but it would take a lot of resources and a lot of time spent mucking about to get it right. There are easy ways to put circular or linear ripples on surfaces, but you would have to place them yourself - they wouldn't automatically appear where a figure interacts with the surface. Animating them is simple. Overall, I think this is a good product for the $50 price and I think that if you're serious about animation in Poser, then you'll want this in your toolkit. After all, if you want to do moving smoke/flame/fluid effects there aren't many other options and they aren't very attractive. I don't see any way you could export MetaForms animations to other programs (from a technical standpoint I don't think that's possible without a separate MetaForm plugin for the destination app), so people looking for a way to animate fluids for Vue etc are out of luck. For stills, I think this product offers a terrific way to make your liquids look more realistic. Making a still picture of a rippled water surface, or a person wading through mud or covered in slime is very easy with the MetaForm/P5 combo (P5 materials really add to that sort of thing and P5 polygon smoothing means you can work with lower settings on your MetaForm polygon subdivision). If you like doing stills of solid objects interacting with liquids, MetaForm will be very useful. If you're primarily after a way to make obj models, I'd recommend trying something like organica or one of the various free modelling apps. No matter what you want it for, you'll get a lot more out of it if you read the manual and familiarise yoursef with some of the technical aspects of how different object types work. The manual covers the basics of what each thing does, but to get really interesting results you have to go further and think about how those basic techniques can be combined to do more complex things. For that reason, I'd say this is more suitable to a user with a technical sort of mind. You need to be able to build on the basics by yourself. When WierdJuice start posting tutes, I may change my mind about that. One thing I'd really like to see added to the product is a set of P5 procedural materials for smoke and flame. It includes some materials but they're all P4 style. P5 materials could be a lot better.

Excellent Ajax! Still not sure it is for me, but would love to see any still images you create with water and fire and any other flowing items.....the mud thing sounds very cool :) As a point of information, I have 512 ram on a PIV 1.7ghz machine. Will I have issues just doing stills with this?? I don't do animation at all. Appreciate any advise you can provide.

Well, I haven't tried it on a 512 ram machine, but my guess is you'd be OK for stills. OTOH, my personal recommendation would be for anybody running P5 to have at least a gig. I plan to move up to 2 gig at some stage for myself. P5 is a RAM hungry beast, especially if you use RAM hungry models like the 3 series millenium figures. And RAM is cheap and easy to add, so why not have as much as you can? When I've got some images to show, I'll post them here.