In Carrara 1.1 I cannot seem to get the "Duplicate with Symmetry" command to work correctly with metaball objects. Instead of a mirror image I get an exact duplicate object that spins wildly as I attempt to pan arround the scene. The command works as expected with spline and mesh models, but goes nuts with metaball objects. As a long time RDS user I am totally perplexed by this. Eovia techs have not responded to my queries. I could convert the master object to a polymesh then dup w/ symm. but would lose the animation advantages of the metaball modeller. This command works wonderfully in RDS 5.5 but as I no longer have RDS 5.5, I'm stuck. System: WinXp, 320MB ram, twin screen (16MB TNT and 32MB TNT graphics cards) Athlon 1.1 GHz.

I don't have 1.1 anymore, but dupe with symmetry seems to work fine in 2.1 in both the assembly room and the metaball modeler.

Try duplicating it, then flipping the duplicate.

I tried duplicating then using the flip command as per your suggestion, but it made no difference. the item duplicated is still not a mirror image and it still spins on its center point as I rotate my camera around the assembly room. Today I purchased Ray Dream 5.5 on eBay and may end up having to use it for this kind of modeling. I'm disappointed that Eovia has not addressed this issue. It seems to be a bug that needs to be fixed. In reality, I liked RDS 5.5's interface better and wished they had expended their energy on including a decent patches/nurbs modeler and the ability to rotoscope an image into modeler to work from (ala Animation Master or LightWave) than all the interface eyecandy.

Get Gemini and the Power Pack (from lost horizon software) symmetry modeling is simple with Gemini, and the power pack includes a plugin for tracing an image ie. rotoscoping. http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/products/gemini/gemini.htm http://www.losthorizonsoftware.com Brian

Here is an image I did quickly with a metaball object and duplicate with symmetry. I had the same issues you did untill I selected "show backfaces" from the pallete. Hope that helps. memaci

Dear memaci, Thank you, thank you, thank you! I tried your suggestion and, viola! it worked beautifully. Thanks again all of you for the helpful suggestions. Kirk

No problem. I learned the tip here in this forum a while back and I'm glad I can pass the info along. Good luck with your animation. memaci