Metaballs and Surface voxels

[tmclemons]

I was experimenting a little bit and discovered metaballs work in octane (seems obvious since they are a form of mesh) but I am curious is it possible to somehow add rendering capabilities to LW octane render just for surface based voxels (not volume or sprite) since I believe surface based voxels are derived from metaballs and metaball behavior?

[juanjgon]

I don't know any tool to polygonize volumetric data in LightWave, but in theory any tool that can produce a triangular mesh could be rendered with Octane.

-Juanjo

[tmclemons]

Well that is my question, metaballs are such an old technology but still active in lightwave. In modeler when you activate metaballs around points it generates a mesh. The higher the metaball resolution the smoother the triangulated mesh. These points can then be carried over into layout and be surfaced and rendered in octane. The interesting thing is because they have metaball properties if the points are moved around (via deformation) the metaballs react in the same way that surface voxels will change on particles when in proximity to each other. I am just hoping there is something deep in the lightwave code that allows to activate metaball generation in layout for particles like for points in modeler and then open the possibility of surfacing them in octane like one would surface them in lw native render.