Can Meta clouds be made from my own mesh.
In other words lets say I make a 3d model of a vey thick artist pallette from primitives or I import a model (aka object). Can the object be converted into a meta cloud object?

I'm trying to get a little more control over meta cloud shape. Rather than the random groups of hundereds of squished spheres the are typicaly generated or that are in the presets. Trying to avoid positioning the hundreds of individual parts of the random stuff to get the shapes I want

Simple answer is no.  You might be able write a python script to move the spheres in a metacloud to the same position as the vertexes in a mesh (you might need multiple meta clouds to get enough spheres for this).

Cheers

Mark

Thank for the Script idea.

I wonder if there's a way I could populate a mesh object of the desired shape with metacloud spheres using an eco system. If not I think I'll ask that as a feature request. That would be useful to me.

Not at the moment as meta clouds are not usable in ecosystems (either as single spheres or as whole clouds).

That's unfortunate, metaclouds have been around  for many years now.  I 'm surprized that this need has not been addressed and solved. Oh well at least I can still shape them into prett much any shape maunually given enough time. Keeps the Work in Art WORK

There is this....   http://www.quadspinner.com/helios/

Probably too expensive for most folks. The lower priced version is still under development, it appears, the trial version is not available, and no updates to the web site for the last three months.  

Funny you should mention helios. I was just checking that out last night. Not sure if it will use metaclouds the way I need but I'll look further into that. Especily if the pending $99.00 USD version will do it.