CompuServe Messages

>How much is MetaBalls? How does it compare to skin.axp? Or should I just get >both? I'm not sure I'm the one you should be asking, Jason, as I'm trying to get a handle on the MetaReyes product myself. I think version 1.0 of the MetaReyes product is $500, but 2.0 will be coming out within weeks (and there's another message posted on the forum here asking for THAT price). As someone who does own SKIN, I think I can give you some general ideas. Skin uses the concept of sliced objects that influence the shape of the skin surrounding them. Some people can do amazing things with it — M.G. Batchelor (sp?) probably wrote the book on using SKIN. I was able to create a fairly decent dinosaur with it that's posted here somewhere, if you want to look at a model created by someone with no artistic talent (but you'll have to have SKIN to see it — hmmm, perhaps I should post a still of it in the Showcase?). I was perfectly satisfied with my ability to create the model with SKIN, but frustrated with the amount of "slices" I ended up with in the final model, because the overhead of linking and maintaining the hierarchy of dozens (or hundreds) of objects and trying to IK them just drove me crazy. It would take me an entire evening just to link the thing alone! Now, with Bones Pro, my own philosophy is I want a smooth looking mesh that I can easily "bone" and animate. I'm hoping that the MetaReyes product will make modeling that smooth mesh easier, because organics are difficult to do (for me) with the Shaper/Lofter. OTOH, someone here has just raised the interesting possibility of using the Smooth routine (which comes with Bones Pro) for a similar approach to MetaBalls, so I need to play with that for a while. It never ends…