CompuServe Thread

Marion – Metaballs aka blobby molecules by Koichi Ohmura in Japan in 1982, and by Jim Blinn in the U.S. If you attended Siggraph in 92 the HDTV animation Dino Tours was created with Metaballs. Thomson Digital Image, SoftImage and Side Effects Software have all incorporated Metaballs technology into their software. They are similar to splines but have fluid dynamic properties, which enabled the rippling skin of the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Working with them is however much more complex as they have distributed weight properties. Weight is like gravity in that Metaballs influence the behavior of each other, and depending on the weight of the Metaball as it gets heavier, it becomes harder and fuses less easily. Super Metaballs have eccentric distribution which permits selective control of the direction in which Metaballs fuse. This is an incredibly powerful technology, which will no doubt change the course of computer animation, but there are still some problems that have to be resolved. Fixed texture maps cannot be used. You may also have seen it used in the liquid morphing sequence in Terminator II. -JE

No, it's "meatballs," it has to do with tray racing. You see it at all the big graphics shows, at the parties at night, big trays of meatballs. It's all the rage. It's tough to reproduce the surface of a meatball, but they did it in Jurassic Park, which is a research park outside of Culver City.