Metaball Procedural

[Korhon]

Hi!

Im trying to create metaball on my particles at rendertime using the metaball_procedural. Im guessing the workflow is to connect the Metaballprocedural_shader to my geometry under render/geometry/Procedural Shader tab

When i try to render i get the following error: "mantra: Error initializing procedural 'metapoly' on object /obj/geo1"

Its a simple scene with points scattered to a sphere. Just trying to make it work!

Am i doing something wrong?

Using Houdini 9.5.230.

Thanks!!!

[melazoma]

Hi,

Apparently the metaball procedural is not an instancing procedural--it won't copy metaballs onto particles.

What it does is that it turns metaballs into polygons at rendertime so you can velocity-motion blur & displace the metaball.

The helpcard says that the procedural "Polygonizes metaballs found in this object or another object."

So the way you use it is to assign the procedural to an object with metaball geometry inside.

[anamous]

Hi there,

I think there is a slight misunderstanding regarding this procedural. It does not actually create metaballs. It takes already SOP-created metaballs and transforms them into polygons at rendertime, allowing for a slightly better motion blur and displacements to be applied to them.

Rendering metaballs is very straight forward - even though they are polygonized in the viewport, they render perfectly. Please check the attached sample.

cheers,

Abdelkareem

Edit: melazoma was quicker

metaballs_sample.hip

Edited October 16, 2008 by anamous

[Korhon]

Wow thanks for clearing this up! The examplefile works like a charm!

Thanks alot!