CompuServe Messages

Jason, >> What's the Smooth PXP…<< Smooth allows you to smooth out sharp angles in your mesh. I use it a lot after a boolean. It has a "Blend" option that will only smooth concave areas of your mesh. It also has a "Selected Vertices" switch that will allow you to just smooth certain areas of your mesh, which I find very handy. I'm not sure if 3DS smooth works with the selected switch or not. It's a good routine that I use for more than just organic shapes. I just finished doing a LOT of geometry for the Industrial part of my reel, and smooth helped out a lot on connecting piping to and from pumps and such. Another good routine to have with a metaballer is Optimize. It has saved me Zillions of hours render time. Not to mention, I don't think I could have made the critter I did with Metaballs and came even close to staying in the 64K face limit without it. On the last project I had to bend a lot of pipe, so I did a lot of tesselating to get good smooth bends. Then Optimize would bring the face count down from over 50,000 to from 2300 to 6000 depending on what angle I thought I could get away with. But, with any luck, you already have that. I don't think I would trade Bones for it. If you are interested in organic animation, I think bones is a must have. It not only works great with IK stuff, you can get some great facial (lips, eyebrows, nose, etc.) movements with it. You can expand the bones to make a portion of the mesh swell, to simulate breathing for example. It's good for other things too, like good whip actions on banners or ribbons. Any single mesh you want to deform. I agree with the other answer you got (Stephen?), if I had to pick just one, that would have to be the one. Glad we don't have to though. <g> Terry