CompuServe Messages

Ok, here's my rookie question before I call it a day and a half. How DO you keep the face count down when using Metaballs, and still keep a reasonable level of detail? The mesh I am trying to create has the smallest sphere scaled to 5% of the largest one. Is this over some kind of limit that Metaballs has? The smaller spheres are like toes on a foot. With 96000+ faces, the face size is still to large to keep the toes from all blending in together. I read that 3DS has a 64,000 face limit. What happens when you exceed that? I've rendered over 100,000, and get no errors, or anything obvious on the image. The last render, I checked "Simplify Mesh", and the face count was still over 96,000. I usually do everything with the unit setup in the architectural mode, does this make a difference? On that note, if you merge meshes that were created in different setup modes, will that cause a problem? The way the program defaults the mesh to the name META and the material having to be named METABALL, is there a way to have more than one MB object in the same scene? Thanks, Terry