I was playing with the metaballs and noticed they have a slight flaw and decided to ask if there was a way around it. how do you group them without them turning into normal spheres? I want to cut peices out of them and things like that, but it won't let me.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=189448&Start=37&Artist=tjohn&ByArtist=Yes

1. Metaballs when grouped with each other don't turn into spheres. Have you downloaded the free update to 5.01? If you haven't, do it now. If you try to group a group of metaballs with a new metaball or second group of metaballs, the groups will have no effect on each other. You must ungroup all groups and then group all the metaballs into one group (no subgroups of metaballs will have any effect on each other). 2. Metaballs can be either positive or negative. The negative ones can be used to "indent" positive metaballs. to see this in action, use the provided link to see a simple object made with metaballs. The dents in the head of the rubber duck are made with negative metaballs (negative metaballs are themselves invisible in the render). Be prepared to experiment a lot to get just the effect you want, by changing the size and position of the negative metaballs. Hope this helps.

Oh, and to my knowledge, other than using transparency maps, there's no way "cut pieces out" of them.

And I will add that they're great fun to play with once you get the hang of them: those ships are made with metaballs, some grouped, some not. Josselin

Attached Link: http://www.acuos.knows.it

Here's one example of metaballs. The dolphin. It's my first attempt at metaballs. I have come a long way from this.

If you SHIFT click on the create metaball icon it will create a negative metaball that acts like a boolean.

Well negative metaballs can do more than just indent. They can cut holes into other metaballs, though the only shape for the hole will be some sort of round shape. Do a search on the forum for metaballs, you'll find a ton of threads with examples and little tidbits on how they interact.

clay, Just got B5 and according to the Support Guy at Corel, it should have all the latest patches. But I checked the version number in properties and it is 5.00 not 5.01. Should I try to apply the 5.01 patch?

I grouped the metaballs to see if I had that turning into spheres problem too - apparently not, and B5 appears to work ok.

• TJ

I'm not clay, but I thoroughly recommend getting the patch. Everthing seems to work better, numbers of metaballs higher than about 30 would always crash my machine. Now the numbers seem to be a lot less limited...no crashes yet. And you get some pretty nice easter eggs like the one that gives you a list of some pretty good Bryce tree presets (Hold the alt key while clicking on the create treen icon... and hold down both till a pop-up menu...uh..pops-up.)

tjohn, What I'm trying to determine is whether or not the .01 patch is already applied to the B5 app. What does B5 do differently or what is available that is not available before the patch is applied? I'll try the alt/click tree thing to see what happens - that might be a clue to the status of the application. Thanks, - TJ

Nada. just got a tree.