zinMetaBalls
 
 

Description:
In various TVC project I had always come across the need for creating metaball effects which till this date, Maya has yet to have an intuitive process like the tool seen in Softimage 3D. I know there is a similar function in Maya called Blobby Surface. The problem is there isn't a straight forward way to edit the position each particle freely. That drives me into creating this little fake metaball script for a quick effects.

  
 

Installation:
Simply copy the downloaded Mel script to
C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\maya\2008\scripts\
source the script from Maya Script Editor and run it by typing zinMetaBalls and hit enter key
Compatible to Maya 7.x and above.

  
  Usage:


1) Amount refers to the number of particles will be created.

2) Hit Make MetaBalls and you will get a particle system built along with a number of nurbs spheres.

Tips:
The nurbs sphere are there to control the location of the associate particle and the primary visibility of all the nurbs spheres are set to Off. The particles will not follow or update to its new loaction until you advance to any frame number greater than 2. Somehow the Maya particle system only begin to refresh after frame 2. Also, you could freely aniamte the scale of each sphere for the particles to follow. You might also need to change the radius and threshold values under the render attributes of particles shape node to achieve desire results.