= Muscles =

This object can
have an arbitrary number of inputs. When a muscle is created, it creates
points based on the locations of its inputs and draws a smooth line
through these points. The SOP then creates a muscle surface lying along
this line. The surface's shape relative to this line can be specified by
the user. The positions and orientations of the inputs control the
position, shape and orientation of the muscle. Hence, the behavior of
the muscle can be influenced by bones or other surrounding geometry.

To generate the muscle surface, the Muscle Object creates a number of
metaball primitives that, when blended together, form a smooth surface.
These metaballs can also be used to capture and deform points. See the
[Capture Metaball SOP|Node:sop/capturemeta] and [Deform Muscle
SOP|Node:sop/deformmuscle]. When using a muscle as a capture region in a
[Capture Metaball SOP|Node:sop/capturemeta], the muscle object's name
with "/muscle" appended to the end of it should be used so that the
underlying [Muscle SOP|Node:sop/muscle] is captured. For example, if the
path to a muscle object is "/obj/muscle1", then the capture region name
that must be used is "/obj/muscle1/muscle".

For more information see [Using Muscle Handles|/shelf/muscle] and [Muscle SOP|Node:OBJ/muscle].

[Image:/images/char/muscles.png]

@related
    - [Node:sop/muscle]
    - [Node:sop/deformmuscle]
    - [Node:sop/inflate]