
Fake and cheap 3D metaball - tobltobs
http://blog.edankwan.com/post/fake-and-cheap-3d-metaball
======
hexadec0079
I read this as meatball and was terribly confused for about a minute. Still
very interesting article on 3D modelling.

Now I'm hungry...

~~~
tobltobs
I was hungry before I opened the page and I saw meatballs. It took me minutes
to recognize the meta vs meat.

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Impossible
This is pretty cool. The technique reminds me of a similar rendering trick
outlined in this Nvidia presentation
([http://developer.download.nvidia.com/presentations/2010/gdc/...](http://developer.download.nvidia.com/presentations/2010/gdc/Direct3D_Effects.pdf))

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tobltobs
The corresponding blog article: [http://blog.edankwan.com/post/fake-and-
cheap-3d-metaball](http://blog.edankwan.com/post/fake-and-cheap-3d-metaball)

~~~
dang
That gives more background, so we changed the URL to that from
[https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/bumpy-
metaballs/](https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/bumpy-metaballs/). People who
are interested should look at both.

~~~
Cogito
I was confused at first, because the authors are different for these two
things.

The current link, fake and cheap metaballs, references the original bumpy
metaballs, but only to compare the fast-but-fake version to a slow and
complete version.

~~~
dang
I didn't realize that. So what's the best URL?

~~~
Cogito
I can't comment on that directly, except to say that both are very interesting
and that I enjoyed the blog post more.

One is a beautiful demonstration of metaballs, and the other is a technical
description of how to get a similar result without the same cost.

I guess ideally they would have separate threads, but that horse has probably
bolted. HN doesn't really have the capability to have a post that says: here
are a collection of interesting posts by different people about this
interesting subject, beyond the comments like we have here or a self-post with
some discussion. That's probably ok.

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dzhiurgis
Title should include that this is a WebGL experiment.

