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.