Here is a particle test, one I had trouble posting some time ago. After several attempts to contain the metaball liquid from showing through the bottom of the pipe. I still can't stop it. It passes 1/2 way through, no matter where I placed the hot point or how subdivided I made the pipe. Any ideas how to stop the particles from passing through the pipe walls?

The problem is I think that the particle collision happens based on the center of the particle, not the surface. You might be able to do something like have an invisible plane near the bottom of your cylinder so the particle collides with the plane and it keeps surface a little higher than the bottom of the cylinder.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara plug-ins

or you could do the same with an invisible pipe inside the original, just adjust the diameter to take the radius of the metaballs into account.

I agree with the invisible pipe... maybe just adding thickness in the vertex room to the cylinder would solve it?

All great ideas, I'll try the invisible pipe. I knew this girl once with an invisible jet... we dated some, but she was always so busy. Thanks - I'll post the next attempt. Robert

I put the pipe aside and played around wth the vertex modeling room a bit to see how fast I could put together a halibut. Here is a 2 hour job without a texture. It needs teeth if I want to get up close, and a nice texture. R

The story about the girl with the invisible plane sounds a bit like a fish story.... Hey, the halibut looks great. Nice motion, too. Did you bone this or is it a modifier?

Thanks, I used bones. The modifier works well, but I tried to keep polygon count down. The gif runs faster on a good connection : ), maybe too fast. I'm watching it now zip along. The eyes need work and I should also look back at my halibut photos. Again, thanks. I'm planning on starting a Bull Moose soon. Has anyone seen a good bush plane - maybe a Beaver - model?