can metaballs have texture which blend between them, the way that they do in Bryce?  As far as I can see, you can only apply a shader to a metaball object, but you can't blend between two metaball objects into each other.

 I am not sure, but what you can do is convert them to a vertex model and handle it that way. i can not test right now. I am currently rendering something, but give that a try.

Thanks for that idea . . . but that isn;t close to the Bryce functionality which actually blends textures-- you get beautiful results.

Playing around, I discover that it is possible in this Metaball engine. You can select metaballs as the particle type from a particle emitter, and that has a time component to the shader. Animate the shader, and you;ll get particles of different colors being emitted, and blended.

Its not nearly as beautiful as a Bryce metaball blend, but it does demonstrate that the engine supports this. . . an area open for investigation -- or, dare I say it-- a bit of clarification from Daz