CompuServe Messages

Metaballs are defines by a point that carries with it radial information and has a threshold at which it will fuse with another metaball. They could be described as behaving like drops of mercury for some types or like clay or putty for other types. Super Metaballs are defined additionally by allowing the modeler to narrow the direction if which the fusing takes place. This is useful for modeling, say, a hand. You want the finger joints to fuse but you do not want the fingers to meld into a mitten-like object. They can create very complex shapes that would be practically impossible with polygonal or even spline-based modelling. They pack into a small file usually about one third the size of a poly file. To give you an idea as to their versatility, it takes about 43 metaballs to make a beautifully designed human figure. Unfortuneately, the problems with rendering them is that they are mostly impossible to map. How can you map objects that fuse? If you want more info, I got this and more from the latest Computer Graphics World. Jim Roof ?exit (let's try that again)