OK, so I'm playing with this here model I made. And I'm happy with it, I really am. But I'd love to make it a symmetrical lattice instead of the booleanosity that it is now. I figured it would be a piece of cake to do an altitude render or distance render from the top view; but, it didn't work. As you can see from this here picture, it's rendering the shape as flat, so this wouldn't make a good lattice at all. Does anyone have any tips for making this work? I know I don't need it to be a lattice, but I'd really prefer it for a variety of reasons. So, any ideas?

Distance mask and altitude mask are 2 different things. Make sure you use altitude mask. Then make sure your object is on the ground plane (if it's way above the plane it will render all white, the altitude mask is based on the ground plane). In your case since you wish it to be a lattice you'll need have your object below ground and the other half showing above the ground. When you render you'll get a greyscale map.

That's exacly what I did. I tried both altitude and distance renders hoping for better results, and neither one works (above is the altitude mask). It renders the ball parts as flat gray, and there should be a gradient. Maybe it's a bug in the Mac version. Or maybe it's a bug with the metaballs. Or maybe it's a different bug altogether, I don't know. I've noticed that metaballs don't always mask properly. I've tried it with the metaballs grouped and ungrouped (what I've found to be the bug with masking metaballs) and still, I get the same results.

Try stretching it so that it's height is greatly exaggerated. Then try your distance render from the top. Steve S.

I do a good deal of terrain work, and were not talking mountains... ...creating sphere and tubular shapes in the terrain editor borders on impossible, even with gradients. You're better off keeping it a boolean. WAY, way less polygons. BUT, I'm sure you want it a terrain, so you can, at the very least, export it, lol.... Wish I could help more, the key is gradients, but that is also the problem, it's very, very difficult.

Ya know... After reading/replying to this post, I began thinking on how you were going about trying to render your jack, to produce a terrain map, the spherical part imparticular. I quickly made up a scene of a regular grey sphere on a black plane, put the camera and a radial sphere directly above it, and rendered it. Then used that render as a solid Symmetrical Lattice. It quickly made a spherical shape, the closest I have ever came to making a sphere out of a terrain. I'll have to keep tweaking everything, see how close I can get it to a perfect sphere. AgentSmith

Agent Smith, that's more or less what I'm trying to do, but it doesn't seem to work so well with metaballs. I'm starting to think it's a metaball issue. The real reason I wanted it as a lattice is so I could more easily snap it to the ground, and to create the seam created by the molding process without adding a terrain to the booleans. I also like the user simplicity of one [exportable] object vs. 31 metaballs, 4 cones, and 2 spheres. I was able to get similar results to your sphere while using a sphere, but not with metaballs. The metaballs seem to render flat.

Yeah, even lattices sometimes won't snap completely to the ground either, depends on how much of the terrain map is filled with actual greyscale. Oh, you want the seam? Lol, always trying to get rid of it, I can see where it would come into play in the Jack, though, or green plastic army men. With the jack, you still might have to have two terrains to export, the main one and another for the "lone post", that one might not extrude so well. Of course, then again, earlier today I said terrain spheres were inpossible... AgentSmith

I guess I wouldn't need metaballs if it were a terrain. I could remodel this out of primitives and altitude render that. I'll have to tinker with it.