Metaball tutorial

I’ve been looking for a very understandable and explaining tutorial on metaballs, with some kind of code where it’s not just some small examples where you don’t get the connection…
So I was wondering if any of you knows a good one, which has the things mentioned above + maybe something about the algoritics for metaballs.

Any kind of help is welcomed…

Thx in advance…

This may not be what you’re looking for but I just like to check out various topics and drop what I know about the subject in hopes that it might help someone.

My understanding of metaballs is that they work with a sort of “field strength” analogy, where the “field strength” for a given point in space is given by the value of some function of the distance from all of the balls. I believe creating a shape out of metaballs would involve analyzing this field and finding the space surface through which the field strength crosses some threshold, and then approximating that surface with polygons.

Hint : isosurface is a better keyword than metaball if you want more in-depth explanations :wink:

Okey, thx for the helping “push” :slight_smile:

Metaballs… Ok, these objects are defined as isosurfaces of an equation, in this case, the equation is much like the electrical charge formula from physics. I will make the bold assumption that you are familiar. Anyways, the trick is figuring out the x,y,z points that fit the function f(x,y,z) = W. The way this is done is by using an octree like structure. For brevity’s sake, I am not going to describe this algorithm, because it is very very documented. It is called “Marching Cubes” and I am sure you can find it by simply searching on Google.