well found a bit of time this evening to write up a mel script that actually does what I just did manually on the previous page! This script works by creating a sphere on each vertex of the mesh and then aligning it to the mesh normals using a normal constraint. Its almost instant in execution and each sphere is separate so I should be able to pass a script to scale them in relation to the texture luminance too! The only prob is that the balls will all have the same uv space so the texture wont work on it but I may be able to sort that out again using mel scripting altho I think I'll be pestering the guys at work as to the exact how to lol!

//simple script that runs through all the vertices of a mesh and puts a ball on it!
//NOTE - does not constrain them to the mesh - its purely for snapping to the verts
//on a mesh and aligning them to the normals.


global proc evosCreateSphereOnMesh()
{
  //get selected objects
  string $mySel[] = `ls -fl -sl`;

  //this performs a wildcard search for all vertices in $mySel[0] and pipes them into $myComponents array...
  //so in the array you would have [vtx[0] vtx[1] vtx[2] etc...]
  string $myComponents[] = `ls -fl ($mySel[0] + ".vtx[*]")`;
  print $myComponents;

  //create empty group node
  $myGroup = `group -n "SPHERES_GRP" -em`;
  //NOTE!!!  It HAS to be created here!  If its created before $mySel is established $mySel becomes the group node
  //which is then queried for vertices and finds none so the script stops!!!
  //This way $mySel looks at the mesh FIRST, then queries for vertices and puts them in $myComponents
  //THEN creates the empty group node.  Everything in the for-in loop below runs as normal after that.



  //a for-in loop that runs through all elements in $myComponents array...
  for ($i in $myComponents)
  {
    //query worldspace position of $i and store it in $vtxPos array...
    float $vtxPos[] = `xform -q -ws -t $i`;

    //create a sphere and store that in $newBall array...
    string $newBall[] = `polySphere -r 0.1`;
    
    //move the item in $newBall to the $vtxPos values...
    move -ws -xyz $vtxPos[0] $vtxPos[1] $vtxPos[2] $newBall[0];
    
    //now constrain the ball to the mesh aligning its Y axis with the mesh :)
    select -r $mySel;
    select -tgl $newBall[0];
    normalConstraint -aim 0 1 0;


    //parent the new ball to the group created earlier...
    select -r $newBall[0];
    parent $newBall[0] $myGroup;
    }

}

//END OF SCRIPT