Hi Gang Is there a reason why you cant cut into meatballs? 1;Make a selection of a meatball, duplicate it, raise it half way up and make them 'Positive' in the attributes. 2;Select a cube, make it 'negative', move to a preferred place so it will cut out a section of the meatballs, group all together and ............. Why cant we cut into a meatball??

You "can" cut into them, but only with other "meatballs" I think. There's a key you have to press, but can't remember which :-/ Len.

Press and hold "Shift" while you are clicking with the mouse to create a negative metaball. Notice I colored the Negative red and the regular metaball Green. The colors will also blend into each other like the shapes do. Negative metaballs look just the same as positive in the wireframe view after you create them. You can change them to a different family color to keep track of them in the wireframe view.

@electroglyph Thats just what i was doing wrong. I was trying to change them through the attributes. The problem that you might be able to help still is....how do you use another object ie; cube, to cut into the meatballs?

You can't.

Thanks AS. I've tried about 100 different ways and still it doesnt work, so I thought you cant do it. It is a shame as you could get some awesome shapes........wonder if Bryce 6 might change that?? Thanks again you guys. Always a pleasure learning from here.

in blender you can convert metaballs with ctrl c and then cut and paste as much as you like. :P

Metaballs only work on other Metaballs. You know you can also assign a volume material to a cube to produce metaball like shapes. Here is a cube with a volume texture applied and the settings.

@electroglyph Now thats something else i didnt know. I really appreciate your help and images John, I always learn more from images than just reading the 'how to'....its my brain not working from the illness i had :( ......Thanks again. Have a great week. Marc.

I've always loved volumetric materials like that, but in this case, I've never been able to get perfect control over the "spheres" that it makes. It is a perversely slow rendering material, reminds me of when I would render simple scenes on my 200mhz cpu... AS