Mantra: Metaball Procedural shader

Polygonizes metaballs found in this object or another object.

This will typically use more memory, but has some advantages. For example, velocity motion blur can be rendered (the point attribute name for velocity can be overridden), displacement shading can be done on metaballs, and the shading rate can have an effect on rendering time.

Note

This procedural works best if no bounding box is specified in the interface.

Parameters

Main

Object	This is the object which contains the metaballs to render. If the option is turned off, then this object’s geometry will be used. If another object is specified, it must be output to mantra for this procedural to work.
Velocity Attribute	This is the name of the velocity attribute to be used for motion blur. The attribute must exist as a point attribute.
FPS	This specifies the frames per second for motion blur.
Level Of Detail	This is a scale on the level of detail used to convert metaballs to polygons. This is scaled by the level of detail parameter of the object. The shading rate still applies to the polygons which are generated from the metaballs.

IFD Bounds

Bounding Box	The bounding box controls let you specify a bounding box for the referenced geometry. Only when this bounding box is “on screen” will mantra load the referenced geometry. You can set Bounding box to No bounding box required, in which case mantra will always load the references geometry regardless. You can also specify the bounding box by referencing the SOP’s bounding box in the SOP Bounds parameter.
SOP Bounds	The geometry whose bounding box you want to reference.
Min Bounds	The minimum bounding box dimensions, when setting explicit bounds.
Max Bounds	The maximum bounding box dimensions, when setting explicit bounds.

Usages in other examples

Example name	Example for