Metaballs for VRay

[MasterBercon]

I was hoping to get few beta testers test the 2009 64 version (I haven't set the compiling settings for the other versions yet) and then I'll just release the final 1.0 for max 9 - 2010 32/64.

The beta is really a release candidate, I don't plan on adding anything and I don't know any bugs so its the final version unless something pops up.

[percydaman]

I just downloaded it for 2009 64bit, as thats what I'm using. Ill let ya know if I have any issues with it.

[MasterBercon]

One bug I found was that you couldn't add points through maxscript, fortunately that was easy to fix. No other bugs found.

[Da_elf]

im only on 2009 32

[duke2]

I imagine this could be pretty useful for accumulated snow.

[jujubee]

Thanks Master - I look forward to trying this out.

[simmsimaging]

So far so good - and thanks for sharing this with the community

I have not run into any bugs/crashes at all. Seems to work flawlessly, although I have not yet tried it with DR.

I am having some trouble figuring out the parameters, and how best to fine tune the shape.

Attached are two comparison images - one with VMB and one with Pwrapper from glu3D. Same superspray was used for both. I spent some time messing around with the parameters and could not get much of a match. Unless you are using them side-by-side it may not matter, but I found that the VMB was harder to get something I liked with. I found that PWrapper seemed to allow a better range of thickness (thick to thin) in the metablob shape, so I could get a nice main chunk and still have finer tendrils/blobs coming off. Any advice on how to do a better job of it?

Render times are comparable so far.

One big advantage of VMB is motion blur: works great and it does not work at all for Pwrapper.

I might do better on the shape once I get a sense of what the parameters all do, and what their meaningful ranges are - bit hard to tell in some cases.

Once again though: thanks! Very cool work you've done on this.
b

[percydaman]

I agree its been a little tough to get the look im after. Could use some more 'tension' between blobs.

[simmsimaging]

motion blur problem?

Might have found a bit of a bug (?)

See the thread below - I was posting about what I thought was an issue I was having with motion blur, but it appears that it's something with the metaball object. The VrayMetaball mesh is not reacting to motion blur settings as per normal. Is this expected?

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...224#post402224

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[MasterBercon]

Oh yeah I forgot to take the time interval into account. Yeah thats a bug. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Thanks for reporting it

I'll write some kind of user manual before the final release to explain all the parameters.

[simmsimaging]

Cool - thanks!

b

[instinct]

Great stuff so far Bercon! Would be very cool if you had a 2k8 version for testing. Would ease comparing it :P

Regards,
Thorsten

[MasterBercon]

Oh yeah I forgot I had suspected that the motion blur for pflow wouldn't work as I wrote it. I had even written the correct fix for it just left it commented out.

Now that thats fixed I'll start writing small user reference and then there is the tedious phase of setting up the compiler settings for each build.

[tricky]

So, if I was doing an animation that included a whole load of planting (shrubs, hedges and the like), could I use this metaball approach be used to create simple 'blobby' meshes that I could apply a bush bitmap to?

[MasterBercon]

Nope. My metaballs don't generate mesh and you'll never get any sensible mapping coordinates for metaballs, this applies to maxs blobmesh too.