Metaballs are pieces of geometry (balls, cubes, cylinders, etc.) that, in the case of C4D, have attractive ‘forces’ attached to them. When these metaball objects come into proximity, they stretch their surfaces towards each other – the extent to which they stretch relative to their distance, as well as how smoothly the bridging geometry is created are parameters that the user can control.

We’ll begin by creating a simple custom metaball object so that you can become familiar with the metaball concept and controls. Then we’ll go over how to import and turn into a metaball a simple PDB file for export to Maya. Open Cinema 4D – in order to navigate the viewport as you would in Maya, go to the Edit pull-down menu at the very top of the interface (not the viewport panel Edit!). Go to Edit ? Preferences… , and in the default “Common” tab (highlighted in red) activate the “Reverse Orbit” checkbox. Now, when you are in the main ‘Perspective’ viewport, you can alt+RMB to tumble, alt+MMB to move, and alt+LMB to zoom.

Download pdf Metaballs in Cinema 4D