Cage opened this issue on Apr 03, 2010 · 610 posts
Cage posted Wed, 05 May 2010 at 8:02 PM
Here's the metaball script, however (for what it's worth), for all of you to try.
It's potentially rather slow, using straight PoserPython and Numeric for the calculations (and not using one of the faster metaball functions, my tests of which haven't been promising, so far). The Weird Juice stuff was compiled, and this can't hope to live up to the speed seen there.
This version is also incomplete. The Tkinter bug in Poser 8+ which was discovered a week or two ago leaves me uncertain how I could best drive a fully-functional version of the script. It needs to be able to add metaballs, create the isosurface geometry, and stay active so the user can keep adding balls. But Tkinter can't be used for this until it's fixed, and the callback method I've been using for the loop scripts develops problems when used for more than one script run. I'm trying to work out the best way to assemble a final version, and so far I'm not happy with the known options. So there are delays with a final version due to conceptual problems.
At any rate, this one can't make the actual metaballs and it will shut down after one run. To use this script:
Add three Poser ball props to a scene. These should end up being named "ball_1", "ball_2", and "ball_3" (minus the quotes).
Position the balls as desired. Use translation and global actor scaling. (I haven't figured out how to enable rotation or axial scaling. :sad:)
Run the script. This will create and select a bounding box around the balls. The bounding box will have parameter dials for the script settings.
"Mesh resolution" controls the density of the marching cubes grid used by the script. Higher values give a higher-density mesh, but take longer to process.
"Threshold" is the value which will be used to determine where the metaball surface is found. A higher value will inflate the meta form (until it reaches the boundary of the cube grid, where it will develop holes). A lower value will shrink the surface.
RUN SCRIPT will start the script, but only if operated using the dial.
END SCRIPT will end the script, but only if using the dial.
Some cases may crop up, particularly with lower mesh resolution and balls which have been scaled down, in which polygons end up being skipped. I haven't found a way to avoid this problem yet, unfortunately.
Sorry this is a bit klunky. :lol: It looks like the GUI situation will be a bit of a head-scratcher for me, so I wanted to get this out so people could try it, and not get their hopes up too high while waiting. 
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Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.
