Big_Hoovie, No it was my misunderstanding, sorry. I got it now. I think I was thinking about the objects that are the subject of the image and thinking that they could just as well be booleans as metaballs? But somehow I got it tangled in my head. Also have you tried 'not hollowing' the sphere(just transparent)? bet you get some odd effects with that especially if you set refraction to 'not 100' (i.e. set refraction to 50 or 150). Anyway I'm not really thinking about this right. I have to watch startrek or something to reset my mind. as 'Enterprise' is on in 15 minutes I think I'll do that for now and come back to this tommorrow after I play with it some in my primative version of Bryce. live long and prosper, - TJ