ok so in between the usual house stuff ( seen as its just me and the kids so limits time a bit) I did it again and started to bite of more than I could chew, only managed to spend 4 hours since saturday morning
started reading up on metaballs / isosurfaces and vert/frag shaders.
so ive binned all the fancy stuff and just plonked for working and I can tart it up later.
for reference so that i can study later;
Guide to Metaballs -
http://www.geisswerks.com/ryan/BLOBS/blobs.html
intro to simple liquid effects with shaders using a second camera and render textures
I stupidly thought that the frag shader stuff would be like the surface shaders ive been studying for the last month or so, but its a different ball game, so thats a ‘learn down the line’ job.