Is it me or are metaballs really poor?

[knight42]

I can't seem to get on with metaballs either. I don't find them intuitive, and I seem to remember you're limited to splines and sphere primitives, too.

I hate to say it, but I found Truespace's metaballs implementation to be better. On the other hand, Cinema doesn't crash and lose all your work 963,472 times a day, so take your pick...

J

[AdamT]

I don't have a problem with metaballs, although it does take some experimentating with the hull size and strength settings. tS does have decent metaballs, but for me it actually crashed 1.7 million times a day. Or so it seemed.

[LucentDreams]

can't confirm the crashing, I don't have much use for them myself, but they work on any object in C4D, they aren't limited, one thing to remeber is to use metaball tags as well as the metaball object for proper control.

[fxgogo]

I really enjoy metaballs in C4D. I have yet to do a animation with them, like the text example Mike Hooma talked about. But I find it cool and intuitive.

[AdamT]

Kai,
We were talking about trueSpace crashing--not Cinema. When I made the switch I couldn't believe how stable XL7 was. Working with tS is like skating on thin ice on a warm day. :)

[knight42]

Originally posted by AdamT
Working with tS is like skating on thin ice on a warm day. :)

LOL! It's a pity, it would be a nice app if it worked. I even miss some of the less quirky bits... That "thing" in the corner of the screen for controlling the view is cool.

[Kotayus]

i find the metaball system to be pretty cool...great with animation...a little meta model i made a little over a month ago

Worm (http://www.xenodesigns.com/imagehost/worm.jpg)

[JIII]

its cool for making simple worms. But these freaks who are talking now enjoy doing complex architectural renderings in meta balls :)

[Kotayus]

hrummmph...ill take my worm somewhere else then!

:hmm:

[Caravaggio]

Is there a combination of settings that can make it so when two points are coming towards eachother the skin of one doesn't "reach out" to the other one? That's the only thing keeping it from being really good for me. That and I also don't think there's a way to have the skin stretch out farther than normal between any two points...

[fxgogo]

Have you tried putting a negative spline in between the to sphere or splines that you want to stop joining?

[Caravaggio]

*Searches manual real quick*
Negative spline...
*Starts to feel insecure*
Um, that's probably something fo r8? I haven't messed with the metaballs very much at all really...

[Kotayus]

the negative attribute is found on the metatag (right click on the object and apply it)

[Caravaggio]

Oh is that what you were talking about. I usually use objects instead of splines so it was kind of confusing.
And while I could do that it would also make them push apart while leaving eachother, which wouldn't look right either, unless I wanted to manually animate the whole thing.

Oh well.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.