To get metaball effect or look, you can use 3 main approaches:

• Boolean with Path Offsets
• Flatten Shape Layers with Bevel
• Flatten Shape Layers with Path Offsets

These approaches will result in vector geometry that you can further modify or export without losing quality and resolution. There are other ways to achieve this look, but I prefer not to lose resolution, whenever possible.

Special thanks for sharing this workflow goes to Deoxan on Discord. They shared their knowledge and file with us. Much appreciated!

Boolean Behaviour approach is great, if you want to join few individual shapes, without using Duplicator. It works by joining multiple meshes together, then by using Positive and Negative Path Offset, you get Metaballs Effect in vector form.

By Positive and Negative, I mean that Positive Path Offset Behaviour pushes out the mesh, lets say by 50px. And Negative Path Offset brings back the mesh by -5opx. This results in an overlapping or closed meshes combined into a Metaball shape.

Boolean workflow results in drop in performance. This is due to the fact that Rounding option on Path Offset is quite processor intensive. There is an alternative approach to this. You can use the following modifiers:

• Subdivide + Bevel
• Bevel
• Resample Paths

Final Behaviour list would look as follows:

• Boolean
• Path Offset (Positive)
• Path Offset (Negative)
• Subdivide (Optional)
• Bevel (or Resample Paths)

This approach helps make this effect easier to animate, art direct and render.

Special thanks for sharing this workflow goes to Michiel van Kleef. He is awesome designer from Netherlands. Check out his work on Instagram!

This approach uses 2 modifiers:

• Flatten Shape Layers
• Bevel

And thats it. It works great in Duplicator setups. It’s simple, effective and pretty versatile. Essentially, you are flattening all the shapes inside Duplicator into 1 layer. Then applying Bevel to it, to round up any sharp corners.

The only downside of this effect is that you can’t control how strong the metaball effect is in the gaps between shapes. Essentially, we are just smoothing out all the shapes. We are not “bridging” gaps between shapes to create goo-ey like structures.

Special mention goes to Mario De Meyer as he did share quite a lot of tips on Discord about this and other metaballs workflows.

By combining Boolean approach with Flatten Shape approach, we get best of both worlds:

• Workflow that works with Duplicators
• Option to control “bridging” between shapes
• Fast and responsive setup – easy to art direct and render

In essence, we simply:

• Flatten all the shapes inside Duplicator
• Offset all the paths out (Positive Path Offset) Save
• Bring all the paths back to original value (Negative Path Offset)
• Subdivide (Optional) to add extra Geometry
• Bevel or Resample Paths to create smooth curves

And thats it 🙂 You can use this approach to create all sorts of intricate and fluid-like designs. This shows that combining multiple behaviours and their order matters. By adding Subdivide, we get to control how goo-ey we want the whole geometry to look like.

Path only based designs can be modified to look like metaballs with an Outline tool. This tool works by creating stroke effect around input shape with one difference. It is not a simple stroke, which is a render effect. It is an actual geometry, which we can further modify.

This workflow let’s us create intricate, alien-web like designs. Often it results in lots of weird filled holes. But this can be fixed by using a Fill Rule modifier.

At the end, you need to use an approach that is best for your design. It’s all about experimentation, being aware what modifiers are doing and how stacking order affects final look. Experiment and have fun!