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328 Chapter 5: Creating Geometry
This will retain the soft selection and pass it
up the stack regardless of whether you exit the
sub-object mode.
5. Click Create p anel > Compound Objects >
BlobMesh, and click a nywhere on the screen to
create the initial metabal l.
6. Go to the Modify panel.
7. In the Blob Objects group, click Add. Select the
Editable Mesh or Editable Poly object.
A metaball appears at each vertex of the selected
object.
8. In the Parameters rollout, turn on Use Soft
Selection.
Metaballs are limited to those vertices that are
affected by the soft selection.
9. Set the Size and Min. Size parameters to set the
sizes of the metaballs.
To create a b lobmesh with sof t sel ection on a s plin e:
1.
Create the spline, and convert it to an Editable
Spline.
2. In the Rendering rollout, turn on both
Renderable and Display Render Mesh.
3. Apply a Mesh Select modifier , and select the
appropriate vertices for soft selection.
4. In the Soft Selection rollout, turn on U se Soft
Selection. Set the Falloff value as desired.
5. Apply a Tur n to Mesh or Tur n to Poly modi fier
to the object.
This will retain the soft selection and pass it
up the stack regardless of whether you exit the
sub-object mode.
6. Click Create p anel > Compound Objects >
BlobMesh, and click a nywhere on the screen to
create the initial metabal l.
7. Go to the Modify panel.
8. In the Blob Objects group, click Add. Select the
Editable Spline.
A metaball appears at each vertex of the selected
object.
9. IntheParametersrollout,turnonUseSoft
Selection.
Metaballs are limited to those vertices that are
affected by the soft selection.
10. Set the Size and Min. Size parameters to set the
sizes of the met abal ls.
To create a blobmesh f rom a par ticle system:
When you use BlobMesh with a particle system, a
metaball is created at each particle’s location. The
size of the metaball is determined by the size of
the particle.
1. Create a particle system (page 2–104) ,andset
up its parameters to animate the particles.
2. Click Create panel > Compound Objects >
BlobMesh, and click anywhere on the screen to
create the initial metaball.
3. Go to the Modify panel.
4. In the Blob O bjects group, click Add. Select
the particle system. A metaball appears at each
part icle in the system.
5. If you have added a Part icle Flow system (page
2–105)
to the blobmesh and you want to create
metaballs only for part icles in specific events,
clickAddontheParticleFlowParameters
rollout to choose the events from a list.
Tip: If you need to prevent the particles
from rendering, do not hide them as t his
can prevent the blobmesh from generating
correctly. Instead, turn off the particle system’s
Renderable option on the
Object Proper ties
dialog (page 1–111)
.