June 15, 2004 at 6:42 pm /
#2429
My 2 cents:
From my experience, metaballs are good for mocking up organic shapes quickly but lack the finesse for fine fine detail. In the context of 3DC. I could probably see myself start an appropriate project with a metaball base, then click commit, then add in the fine detail with 3DC’ polygonal tools.
My personal opinion is that 3DC should beef up said fine detail tools in order to make something like metaballs worthwhile.
On another note, the marching cubes algorithm of which metaballs are usually implemented on is patented, licensed and defended by GE. Just FYI.
(BTW, if one were to look into metaballs, I highly suggest looking into ZBrush’s ZSphere Modelling method. I am utterly in love with their skew implementation of metaballs.)