Metaball start

[fid]

At first I started out with a crawly worm. It wasn’t very good. I converted it to a mesh so I could color it in and lost my go back when Blender quit on me.
I looked at some of the artwork people had posted and realized I had to up my game since we are going to be sculpting in a few lectures.
Here is my new beginning.

One thing I noticed while I was positioning the palms and the thumbs is that the blobs (metaballs) would change shape as they were being moved in 3D space. I modeled the palm forward and up to the right of Groot so I could get the basic shape. I positioned it in the proper spot on the X and Z looking from the front. When I set Y to zero the palm disappeared. Control-Z to bring it back out. A repeat of Y = 0 made the palm disappear. So, I decided to move it on the Y into position. While slowly moving the palm along the Y axis I noticed the palm changing shape and disappearing as it moved. As it moved along the shape would morph and disappear again and again. I think this is strange behavior. Is this normal? The two thumbs are shift-D copies.

Right now you can see his right thumb is detached. I wonder what will happen if I move the whole model forward slightly, like 5mm or so. Well, as I move the entire model the thumb doesn’t change. When I move just the thumb it disappears and reappears but never gains the same shape as the one on the other hand. Would upgrading from Blender v2.81a help?

edit: I installed Blender v3.01 for MacOS and get the same result with the thumb metaball.

[NP5]

Might it be a scale issue? Very tiny parts, apply scale might help.

[fid]

When I started out I had Groot’s base about 10 meters in diameter. I scaled it down to a normal size when I noticed that moving the eyes with G - X - .5 and the eyes barely moved at all.
I’ll load it up again and test with a fresh set of metaballs (I still consider them blobs from the POV-Ray days). I’ll let you know my findings.
I’ll also test it out with Blender 3.01.

[fid]

This is the result I get when resizing just the first MBall. I get the same result after I resize the entire figure by selecting all of the MBall family members and make the Groot large. After the resizing I select just the MBall with no number suffix and the result is the same. When I select a different MetaBall, such as the lowest MBall, an upper arm, or the shoulders, I do not get this craziness happening. It is only with the first, original, MBall. Is there an option that I should adjust in the Object Data Properties?
I have tried this in v2.8 and v3.0 with the same results.

[NP5]

Weird have you parented some of the others to that one?
Are all rotations and scales applied?

[fid]

When I resized the entire model down to a realistic proportion instead of about 10 meters in diameter I didn’t apply the scaling, but the problem was showing up before that. I am going to rebuild Groot and have the first MBall at the bottom. I am also going to watch the Using Metaballs and Metaball Families sessions again to try and figure out where I went wrong.

Thank you for these fun classes.

[fid]

In the Using Metaballs session at about 2:13 when he moves the first Metaball in wireframe mode you can see the wireframe shifting all over the place. At 2:30 when he moves the capsule Metaball the rest of the wireframe (I keep wanting to call it a mesh) does not shift around.
–edit–
Another thing that I noticed is that some of the time I used Shift-D for a new Metaball and other times I used Shift-A. Does that matter? In Using Metaballs he used Shift-D all of the time until he got to the mouth where he was going to use a negative Metaball. At that time he used Shift-A. Does it matter to use Shift-A or Shift-D when creating families of Metaballs?

–adding on–
I decided to start anew. I created a Metaball, capsule that is standing vertical. Shift-D to duplicate and move it on the Z axis above the first Metaball. Shift-D on this second Metaball and move the duplicate above the two. Shift-D to duplicate this top Metaball and move it to the right on the X axis. I scale this fourth Metaball to be a little longer and quite a bit skinnier, so it will look like an upper arm. I then rotate it on the Y axis to about 80 degrees. It looks like an arm sticking out. At this point I decided to see what happens when I scale the first Metaball. The arm that sticks out goes all wonky during the scaling. In Wireframe mode you can see that the wireframe starts to break up.

I reverted back until I just had the copy moved off to the right and scaled and rotated it to the proportions that I was looking for. When I tried to use Control-A to set the scaling it did not go well. It looked quite the mess.

Perhaps in the original I am going to have to scale the first Metaball so I get the thumbs and arms to show up properly. After that I’ll leave the first Metaball alone.

:another edit:
To keep the Metaball from messing with the character I decided to separate the MBall from the rest of the family. I am no longer having the tearing issues. I placed the first MBall below the center of origin.

[Zangk]

I am Groot?