Hey, ya'll. Newbie here, with a newbie question. tried google the web for tut's, suggestions, idea's on how to make hoses, bended tubes, tentacle sort of things in bryce 5, but I can't seem to find anything. My question is: Is it at all possible to create this ? If so, how do one do that ? Could I plz, be directed to a tut or site or anything. P-man

Attached Link: http://www.alexbarrie.com/tutorial/latticetut.html

Here's a tutorial that I think will apply. Personally, I use Rhino to model anything "organic." Far more control over what Bryce can easily do and, once you've figured out Rhino, the results much, much, more accurate. Hope that helps.

Make a path from the preset libray...preferably one with a lot of curves to it. Then make a crapload of metaballs that are the right diameter for your pipes or tubes. Bend the path into the shape you want by pulling the little blue handle points around. Then link all the metaballs to the path, and under attributes, click "align to path." Then move one metaball to the end of the path, the next one so it's touching it....and so on....until you've finished the tube. Then delete the extra metaballs if you have any and do any tweaks to make it just right. This is the real cool part: save it in the presets because it's fully editable. Whenever you want a pipe just get it from the presets and you can edit it to fit your needs by pulling the pah handles around. You can also change the size of the metaballs as needed.

Here's a little example of B5 and a Metaball hose.

The hose at the very top has metaballs shaped like 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, to have a smooth hose, just re-shape them to 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, a 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

The material used for all the hoses above is called "console bump" and can be found on the bryce cd.

Oh, god, thank you. You have no idea of how long I looked for this, and then it turned out to be quite simple after all. I was thinking metaballs, but did not think of m&m'ing them and tweaking the actual balls to turn out this way... Again, many thanks. Patric