Talk:Metaballs
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[edit] confusion with meatballs?
Isn't the "not to be confused with meatballs" line a bit too much? I don't think someone who is looking for the meatballs article would accidently type metalballs and not notice the error when reading this article... Felsir 13:35, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
- Removed the sentence. If there are reasons to keep the sentence state, please discuss here. Felsir 12:23, August 3, 2005 (UTC)
- When I first learned about metaballs I read the word as "meatballs" and thought of them as such. It would have been helpful if the difference in spelling was made blatantly obvious from the first moment. Just a random thought, I didn't write this article or anything. 136.165.84.139 02:47, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- Heh. The parent wrote 'metalball' 69.203.13.29 01:53, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] n-dimensional?
"Metaballs, in computer graphics terms, are organic-looking n-dimensional objects". I know the metaball function can obviously be extended to any number of dimensions, but "in computer graphics terms", I've never seen anything other than 3-D surfaces generated from metaballs.... Anybody care if, for the sake of clarity for the CG newbie, we simply state that they are 3D surfaces, often used for, say, crude approximations of water, etc.? Kjl 06:51, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
- I agree that some typical uses of 3D metaball surfaces should be mentioned in the article, preferably in the first paragraph, but the simplified definition you suggested would exclude the 2D variant (which has also been in actual use in computer graphics). --Viznut 09:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Inventor(s)
Was Jim Blinn the inventor of both the 2D and the 3D rendering techniques, or were there others involved?
[edit] The math for this seems a little off
According to the original Jim Blinn paper the points interior to the surface have densenties greater then the iso value (aka the threshold). Values outside of the surface would be less then the iso value. This make sense because: Assume that your function is 1/dist. If you sum this up: values closer to the your center would be greater and values further alway from you center would be smaller - therefore you would have easily exceeded your threshold if you were just a minute distance away from the center. Now if you were summing up dist instead of 1/dist - yes formual would hold for sum < threshold.
There are various books and other pages on the Web that discuss it both ways. http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dx10-practical-metaballs.html The code in the presentation indicatse that the point is inside if the point is > 1, else it is outside. Of course http://www.delphi3d.net/articles/viewarticle.php?article=metaballs.htm is in agreement with the article.
I understand there are various ways to use the formula and the inside or outside is left up to the writer of the algorithm. But if you're going to reference the original Blinn paper, I think it's fitting to also use the original description of the algorithm.
This would coincide with the original model that Blinn was representing. I don't think Blinn referred to his model as metaballs - the term blobby surfaces was used frequently. According to this source: http://steve.hollasch.net/cgindex/misc/metaballs.html - it was Japanese researchers that first used this one. This reference isn't isolated, there are a many references one can find on the web regarding this.
Regarding the "not to be confused with meatball" comment. That's actually metaballs folklore that gets passed around for a few laughs. It seems like it was a stab at the Japanese mispelling the word as meatballs.
Just my 2 cents.
