Metaballs is a great method of creating organic shapes.
Spheres and elongated spheres are very easy to make in 3D applications.
A very complex shape like a nose can be roughed out by making many spheres and arranging them appropriately.
Metaballs behave much like balls of mercury in a dish; as they get close together, they begin to influence each other.
The closer they are, the more they influence each other until it becomes impossible to tell them apart.
3D applications that use metaballs go one step further by allowing you to designate how strong this attraction between spheres is.
It is easy to see how powerful metaballs can be.
The only problem is that in order to make nice, round, organic shapes, metaballs must make high poly-count objects.
These high poly-count objects can quickly add up to be an extremely heavy model, so use metaballs with restraint.
HyperNURBS, like all NURBS objects, are generator objects; that is, they create new shapes by using other shapes.
Most NURBS objects use spline objects to generate shapes.
HyperNURBS is the notable exception.
Hyper-NURBS uses polygons or primitives to create new rounded shapes through a subdivision algorithm.
Translated, this means that you can begin with a square and pull facets of faces of it in new directions into lots of new shapes, and then once placed in a HyperNURBS, the square edges become round.
Not all 3D applications have this powerful feature.
Only recently has it been added to Cinema4D's arsenal.
LightWave has had SubPatch, which is its term for creating objects in this way, for quite a few versions now.
Strata StudioPro does not have a HyperNURBS functionality; therefore, if you're following the Strata StudioPro end of the tutorial, use the skinning method for the feet and hands that we are about to create using HyperNURBS.