Enable – Turns the metaball object on and off. Use particle size – When enabled, the particle size from the source particle system is used. Particle radius – When Use particle size is disabled, this parameter determines the size of the particles. Threshold – Controls how close the iso-surface is to the particles. Lower values move the surface away from the particles, while higher values make the surface cling close to the particles. For more information, see the Threshold example below. Step length – The main control for quality vs. render time of the metaballs surface. Lower values produce a more precise surface, but may take more render time. Higher values reduce the render times, but can produce artifacts. The metaballs object uses a larger step length for GI rays in order to reduce the render times. For more information, see the Step Length example below. Distance function – Determines the type of function that is used to produce the metaballs field around the particles. For more information, see the Distance Function example below. Smoothing field bumps – When enabled, smooths out the surface by culling away small stray particles. For more information, see the Smoothing example below. Smooth radius – Specifies the radius value when Smoothing field bumps is enabled. Smooth expansion – Further controls the smoothing. Color source – Determines the color source when a material that uses a VRayParticleTex texture is assigned to the VRayMetaball object. VRayParticleTex is commonly used to vary shading of particles within a single particle system based on Particle Flow operators such as the standard Display operator, the VRayParticleColor operator, or an operator that uses a script to supply color data. For more information, see the Color Source example below. Display color – The VRayParticleTex texture returns the display color of the particles as specified in the Particle Flow Display operator. VRayParticleColor – The VRayParticleTex texture returns the color specified by the VRayParticleColor operator in the Particle Flow system. Script vector – VRayParticleTex returns the point3 value set in the .particleVector channel of each particle to determine the color. These values present vectors from per particle script channel data as a color source. Script channel data is settable using script-based operators (Script Operator, Script Test and Birth Script) and Data operators. Object xyz – Specifies a node relative to which textures with Object XYZ mapping are computed when they are used for field texture. |