Metaball help request

Metaball help request

I'm trying to replicate the attached rendering using metaballs in Cheetah. I've played around with putting the 7 balls into an Isosurface creator and even tagging each ball with the Meta tag. However, the various settings don't seem to allow me to 'stretch' the metaballs as far apart as needed, yet retain linkage.

Any help or useful setting values would be appreciated.

I would also use the cylinders. Something like this:

pomopaul said:

I would also use the cylinders. Something like this:

Click to expand...

Thanks for including the file. You Sir are a genius! How did you ever figure that out? I spent at least a half an hour taking your file apart until I started to understand (somewhat) How you achieved it. Genius I say! Do a tutorial I would love to see your thoughts. Thanks again.

Iso Meta Thingy

Great thread -- reviving my experimental side -- here is my offering.

I used an ISOsurface with a Disk and a Star inside - this way you can vary the radius at will and even increase or decrease the number of spokes on the horizontal plane -- and with the MetaTag you can also adjust the weight as well. I included the .jas file

Cheers

woah, Rene66's looks exactly like you wanted it. I didnt know you could use splines...i would like a tut for that. :tongue:
As for my tut, dont have any photo editing software, dont feel like taking the time, (i'm 10), and also dont have a screen recorder. So i guess ill do it here.

1. Insert Isosurface
2. Insert a ball, and scale to preferences
3. Select the transform tool. Set snapping to raster and raster size to what ever you want (2 in my case). PICTURE 1
4. Now copy the center ball and move the copy's in all 6 directions.
5. Insert a cylinder. Set the sections longitudinal to 0. Add a metaball tag, and change the radius to preference. Also, add a few sections height for the next step. PICTURE 2
6. Change the height of the cylinder so that the tops and bottoms are in the top and bottom circle. PICTURE 3
7. Add more sections height until the cylinder looks like one line. Only later did i realize i could've used splines instead of cylinders... PICTURE 4

NOTE: The smaller the radius you set to the metaball tag(step 5), the more sections height you'll need and the skinnier the line.

8. copy paste the cylinder and rotate to fill in the remaining connection holes. PICTURE 5

... (i'm 10) ...

Click to expand...

10? Thats impressive!

Metaball thing is cool too.

--shift studio.

:icon_thumbup: You rock pomopaul! You seem to have such a generous spontaneous up-beat spirit. . . to top it off you’ve got a top notch brain. You sure know your stuff about 3D.

:icon_thumbup: Rene66 your 3D expertise far surpasses most also and your generosity of sharing with us is so appreciated.

:icon_thumbup: ZooHead and Uncle Bob you know we appreciate you just as much. That goes for a lot of others also. I’ve just mentioned those on this thread.

Thanks for passing your knowledge on to us and for sharing your files and tuts!

My Best Regards
Jeanny

Thanks for the tip zoohead, i would like a tut about how to do that

Oh yeah, and thanks Jeanny, your always so nice :icon_thumbup:
Also, thanks Shift Studio! :icon_thumbup:

figured it out myself couldnt upload it. ''invalid forum specified. if you followed a link, please contact the administrator Uploaded it to youtube, as my first vid http://youtu.be/dNwQr3xtSjw