Programming gradient blobs

[Anonymous]

Hi! I'm new to 3ds Max, yet would like to use it as 3D generated content displayer. Actually considering it vs. some 3D SDK (like Direct3D etc) or even manual image generation.

For now I'd created (in a program) 2D sequences of frames by generating 2D matrix of intensity/color for each frame, then putting all frames into video. Generally it looks like this: a mess of blobs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsgRODlA2xQ (make sound off first)

I'd like to generate similar shapes yet now in 3D and putting them as video. I'd prefer to use 3ds Max, for possibility of visual effects and beautifying later on.

I guess that ideally for Max would be to have a mesh as input, yet it's hard for me to extract mesh from raster data. Each pixel has its color separately calculated and they change gradually (alpha gradients). So each blob has many pixels inside that in 3D will be invisible and thus unnecessary. Not a problem for me, if tolerable performance-wise. I'd like to avoid shape borders extraction.

What would be the best way to display such 3D data? As an input there's a 3D matrix of space-pixels, each pixel having some alpha-channel value (serving also as black-white color value). Which is overall not random or chaotic data (like clouds etc.), only blobs having fuzzy borders.

1) With 3ds Max (how? - hints please on modelling this)

2) 3D SDK? (hints also would be helpful, I know only meshes and transformations there)

3) Render all manually? I'd die doing shading for this...

Thanks in advance

[Anonymous]

I am not sure i understand everything your looking for but if your looking to put abstract deforming 3d elements to music i would check this program out.

Mandelbulb 3D Fractal -animation. You can play with mathmatical formulas to alter the shapes over time.

Some youtube sample movies people have done. Some morph a little some morph alot but you can hunt for more  vids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsuYZg8k-Zc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrBXWVfxHoE