Does anyone know how to export metaballs -- with the metaball effects processed?  I'm trying to export a particle fountain, and have tried just about every export format and Carrara option.  All I get is the balls with no metaball effects!

I would appreciate any ideas on this subject; however, my present conclusion is that Carrara metaballs only exist as rendered objects, and have no "true" mesh definition.

Thanks!

What do you mean by processed effect?  I just lumped a few metaball shapes together and exported the whole as a 3DS file, then I imported it into Bryce.  The mesh looks the same in Bryce as in the C5 assemble room. ???   

I should have been more specific. I was trying to export metaball based particle effects. Try exporting a particle system fountain, using metaballs as the objects.  I tried to export the final frame of the animation, and only get the spheres -- as they show-up in the Assembly Room. The only way to see the resultant metaball effects is to render the scene -- or so it seems.  So, exporting just gives you the spheres that you see in the render room.

I was hoping that it would work the same as the displacement effects.   That you could export displacement effects (meshes) if you select "Displace in 3D View," but there is no such option (that I can find) to do the same for metaball based particles.

That's usually the way it works with partical effects.  The simulation is calculated at render time.  I read somewhere that particle effects are typically done one of 3 ways.  As textured billboards, as metaballs, or as 3D meshes (lots of render time).  Sounds like metaball particle effects are not 3D meshes then?  Unfortunately, I've never played with Carrara's particle system.  The few times I've used particle effects was with Particle Illusion, which is for post render effects.  Hopefully, someone with first hand knowledge of C5's particle system will wander by and give us the exact skinny on exporting.  But off hand, I'd say you are right in thinking that you can't do it.                   

Hi LCB, As Ialora mentions, particles are not "real" objects and only have their effects created by the Carrara render engine. Now, you can cheat that a little if you're using standard particles by scrubbing your timeline to where you like it and then converting the Particle Emitter to a Vertex object. This doesn't work for particles using metaballs however. :-P Mark

Oh good!  You are back and I don't have to fake knowing something about Carrara anymore. ;-)  Good tip to know about comverting particles to vertex objects. 

Irene  

Hello Mark,

I had pretty much tested all options (including converting to vertex), and had concluded just what you stated, but as a few of you Carrara users are true Carrara experts, I thought I'd post the question anyways.

Also, is there a straight forward way to slice a primitive, then separate the slices into discrete objects?  For example, use a 2D plane to cut a sphere in sections using Booleans, then decompose into individual sections?  I can do this in trueSpace, but Carrara doesn’t appear to allow for the slices to be separated.  It does slice, but you can’t  decompose, or split the slices into separate objects.  This makes no sense to me.

I know that the booleanated primitive becomes a vertex object, and you can thus select and detach polygons in the vertex room, but a true Boolean function should simply allow you to split the objects in the Assembly room. The polygon detachment is not a subset of the Boolean function anyway.  Just something you might do as a work-around in some cases.

But, I might be missing something here…any ideas?

Thanks much!

Hi LCBoliou, Agreed - it's problematic. To that end, there are a couple of things you can do: 1) move the separate parts in the vertex room, or 2) duplicated the sliced object corresponding to "new" parts, open each in the Vertex room and delete parts on each until you have the correct number of new objects. I didn't say it was an ideal solution... :-P