metaimport VEX function

Once you get a handle to a metaball using metastart and metanext, you can query attributes of the metaball with metaimport.

1. int metaimport(int handle, string attrib, vector P, type value&)

2. arraytype metaimport(string file, attribute; vector P)

Once you get a handle to a metaball using metastart and metanext, you can query attributes of the metaball with metaimport.

There are three “special” attributes you can query:

float meta:density	The density of the current metaball
float meta:prim	The primitive number of the current metaball
matrix meta:transform	The transform associated with the current metaball. Applying the inverse of this transform will transform a point into the “space” of the metaball.

For example, the metaweight function can be expressed in the following way:

float
metaweight(string file; vector P)
{
    int        handle;
    float    density, tmp;

    density = 0;
    handle = metastart(file, P);
    while (metanext(handle))
    {
    if (metaimport(handle, "meta:density", P, tmp))
        density += tmp;
    }
    return density;
}

The attributes evaluated are un-premultiplied by the weight of the metaball at the position and must be multipled for blending. For example, to evaluate a vector attribute (say color) on metaballs, the following function could be used:

vector
meta_attribute(string file, attrib_name; vector P)
{
    int        handle;
    vector    result, tmp;
    float    density;

    handle = metastart(file, P);
    result = 0;
    while (metanext(handle))
    {
    if (metaimport(handle, "meta:density", P, density))
    {
        if (metaimport(handle, attrib_name, P, tmp))
        result += density * tmp;
    }
    }
    return result;
}

In the image3d context, there is a default metaball geometry (specified by the -g option on the command line to the i3dgen program). If the filename is an empty string, the default geometry will be used.