There are a handful of things that I always wanted to be able to do in Bryce 4 but, never really could. One was to make hoses, tubes, pipes, etc. Curved tubes of any sort. Now with Metaballs, a path and multi-replicate, I can make anything hose/pipe related curving anywhere along x,y,and/or z. Love it. Agent Smith

very cool! =-)

Like the texture as well.

I believe the texture came with Bryce 4, one of the texture extra's off the cd? Either way, it's called "Console bump". Agent Smith

Isn't there a way to make it smoother and less bumpy? I don't like meraballs cos I can't control it! Aaaarggh!

Metaballs! See, I can't even SPELL it right! :-)

Of course you can make them less bumpy...the hose at the top has metaballs shaped like...well, Plain M&M's (x=20,y=20,z=10). And, they are spaced apart enough that it causes them to have those ridges, but that was the effect I was going after. But..just re-shape them to er, Peanut M&M's...(x=15,y=15,z=20) and either replicate them slightly closer together or just replicate a larger number and there ya go, smooth tube/pipe/hose. Shown here with and without bump map. When doing these multi-replications, I spaced the above hose metaballs 0.15 apart, quantity = 22. The bottom hose 0.17 apart, quantity = 32. Also, avoid paths that have sharp curves, this will cause the metaballs to be set closer in proximity to each other on the curves and make your hose look as if it is bulging. Hope that helps. Agent Smith

Great little tutorial, man... I only used the Bryce 5 demo, and I am curious about metaballs. They remind me of Bispheres, a 'la Amorphium, but can you change the energy on Metaballs? How do you do that...?

Energy? I have Amorphium 1.0, but haven't really used it for anything except bending and beating the hell out of some models I wanted to look worn in Bryce, I'll have to actually take a look at the Biosphere section now. Yeah, I 'm using the Bryce 5 demo here. I never really thought about using Metaballs for curved pipes/hoses/tubes until I started messing around with the demo. As far as I can see, the Bryce 5 Metaball can only be a sphere. Squish it, stretch it, but still a sphere. If Corel would offer metaballs in the currently available array of primitives it would be a great leap in more organic type modeling. Agent Smith

Attached Link: http://66.70.166.29/mpegs/%20blob.mov

Its a shame that metaballs dont accept the awesome new smoke volumetrics of B5

I too have been exploring the potential of metaballs
on paths and was hoping to animate billowing smoke
but arganic animation is now possible in bryce
as in this small (300k) animation.

That is strange/too bad. I tried out metaballs with volumetrics, it will accept and render some of them, but not the really cool ones, like "grey smoke", the realistic clouds, etc. Yet another thing I hope Corel can fix. Cool little animation ya got there. Agent Smith