Forum: Bryce

Subject: Playing with my metaballs...

AgentSmith opened this issue on Mar 03, 2003 ยท 29 posts

AgentSmith posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 5:56 PM

I like how the metaballs will give you a natural rounded edge in booleaning, as compared to normal primitives. AgentSmith

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Doublecrash posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 6:01 PM

Very interesting indeed. Could you explain the technique you used? Negative metaballs? Stefano

AgentSmith posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 6:19 PM

Yup, that's all. Negative in the middle, small ones surrounding. AS

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bhubenig posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 6:42 PM

I work on a Mac and I have never been able to get negative metaballs to work! Any ideas?

Brian

AgentSmith posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 6:53 PM

Just hold down on the Mac equal of "Shift", and click the metaball icon, it will make a negative metaball.

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Aldaron posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 6:55 PM

bhubenig are you shift-clicking the create metaball icon? Metaball booleaning doesn't work like normal boolean. You shift-click the metaball icon and it will create a metaball that looks just like a normal one (good idea to rename them so you can find them again). Then when it comes near a positive metaball it will subtract when rendered. No grouping needed. For more on metaballs search the forum as a lot of things have been explained before. Hope this helps

AgentSmith posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 7:13 PM

I also noticed when I grouped negative metaballs, they dissapeared altogether, neither positive nor negative. But if you group negative and positive together, you're fine, nothing changes. *Aldaron's right, no reason to group any metaballs for booleaning, I just do it to move them around as a group. AS

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bhubenig posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 7:21 PM

Great. Thanks for the tips. I got it together now.

About the image, AS, genious texturing. I really like the effect.

BH

Roch222 posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 11:05 PM

Nice image - But if you keep playing with your metaballs you'll go blind roch222;/

alvinylaya posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 11:11 PM

I love metaballs, only thing is that it's a little harder to control than booleans. I can't always predict the merging or subtraction. But seeing this image is really encouraging. I just gotta get more familiar with its behavior I guess. Alvin

AgentSmith posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 11:12 PM

Yeah, I was going to make a joke about my balls being wet, but being a mod, I could never do such a thing...

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AgentSmith posted Mon, 03 March 2003 at 11:15 PM

Yeah, the metaballs are sensitive (no pun intended). It doesn't take much movement to make a difference in appearance. The softened edges are subtle, but make a great difference.

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catlin_mc posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 11:26 AM

I've found that when using negative metaballs the cut out a larger area than their actual size. Is this normal or is it just me? 8P Catlin

AgentSmith posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 1:25 PM

Oh, VERY normal. Makes it difficult to make precise objects AS

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Aldaron posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 1:49 PM

It's influence is determined by the bounding box, same applies to positive metaballs. The more the bounding boxes overlap the more "melting" or subtracting the metaball will do.

Ang25 posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 3:28 PM

Ok guys, I get the "how dumb is she" award. I've had bryce for almost a year and I couldn't figure out how to get a negative metaball. And it gets worse, even with the instructions in this thread it took me several trys and rereads to figure it out. But I now know how! So I will be able to play with the balls too! ;-)

catlin_mc posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 3:35 PM

Ang that was the same story with me when I first found out about negative metaballs, I even copied what folk were saying and printed it out, how dumb is that. So put away the dunce cap and shout out a yipee for succeeding, (in the end). 8) Cat

Ornlu posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 5:12 PM

I don't know what this is... just felt like uploading something lol. Metaballs are fun.

AgentSmith posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 6:03 PM

Way fun! For some reason the word "tounge cave" comes to mind, Ornlu. Love it, and love that mat! AgentSmith

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AgentSmith posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 6:06 PM

This is a small version of an abstract I did back in Nov. with metaballs, mulit-replicated, on a path. Never really liked the end result that much, so I had never uploaded it. I would KILL for Bryce to have metaballs in different shapes! (cube, cone, torus, etc.) AS

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madmax_br5 posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 6:11 PM

me too then i guess! Just made this one real quick..it was fun...

AgentSmith posted Tue, 04 March 2003 at 6:19 PM

Go that glazed-pottery-project thing going on, excellent. AS

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Aldaron posted Wed, 05 March 2003 at 8:58 AM

They key with metaballs is to think of them as digital clay. :)

Ornlu posted Wed, 05 March 2003 at 5:43 PM

Yep, think of a negative metaball as your finger, when you push it into the metaball, (clay) it responds just how you'd expect it to.

Innovator posted Fri, 07 March 2003 at 2:02 AM

ok, Ive been using Bryce for 4 years but have only had Bryce 5 for like 3 months and this metaball thing is killing me. I want to do some metaball modeling, but I cant get the boolean thing to work (well I did once, but havent since). Im not too sure wut I did to make it work, butI really want to learn how to do this. it wont make the metball negative when I give it negative attributes. Can anyone help?? thanks

AgentSmith posted Fri, 07 March 2003 at 4:52 AM

All you have to do is hold down the "Shift" button on your keyboard (or Mac equivalent), and click on the metaball icon you normally do to create one. Viola! Negative metaball. No grouping required. Note/warning, if you group just negative metaballs together, they just dissapear from your render, not negative or positive. They're a bit of a pain at first but after say, the 20th curse word...it starts getting fun...

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Innovator posted Fri, 07 March 2003 at 5:52 AM

yeah, thanks...I feel stupid...I figured it out 5 mins after posting...thanks though :-)

AgentSmith posted Fri, 07 March 2003 at 5:59 AM

Lol...that is always the way it happens, too.

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Aldaron posted Fri, 07 March 2003 at 7:24 AM

For more info on metaballs do a search on the forum. This has been discussed several times and there was one thread I stated many properties of metaballs.