Using 2D metaballs to draw an outline with a constant thickness - graphics

Question

I'm apply the concept of metaballs to a game I'm making in order to show that the player has selected a few ships, like so http://prntscr.com/klgktf
However, my goal is to keep a constant thickness of this outline, and that's not what I'm getting with the current code.
I'm using a GLSL shader to do this, and I pass to the fragmentation shader a uniform array of positions for the ships (u_metaballs).
Vertex shader:
#version 120
void main() {
gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;
}
Fragmentation shader:
#version 120
uniform vec2 u_metaballs[128];
void main() {
float intensity = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < 128 && u_metaballs[i].x != 0; i++){
float r = length(u_metaballs[i] - gl_FragCoord.xy);
intensity += 1 / r;
}
gl_FragColor = vec4(0, 0, 0, 0);
if(intensity > .2 && intensity < .21)
gl_FragColor = vec4(.5, 1, .7, .2);
}
I've tried playing around with the intensity ranges, and even changing 1 / r to 10000 / (r ^ 4) which (although it makes no sense) helps a bit, though it does not fix the problem.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

after some more taught it is doable even in single pass ... you just compute the distance to nearest metaball and if less or equal to the boundary thickness render fragment otherwise discard it ... Here example (assuming single quad <-1,+1> is rendered covering whole screen):
Vertex:
// Vertex
varying vec2 pos; // fragment position in world space
void main()
{
pos=gl_Vertex.xy;
gl_Position=ftransform();
}
Fragment:
// Fragment
#version 120
varying vec2 pos;
const float r=0.3; // metabal radius
const float w=0.02; // border line thickness
uniform vec2 u_metaballs[5]=
{
vec2(-0.25,-0.25),
vec2(+0.25,-0.25),
vec2( 0.00,+0.05),
vec2(+0.30,+0.35),
vec2(-1000.1,-1000.1), // end of metaballs
};
void main()
{
int i;
float d;
// d = min distance to any metaball
for (d=r+r+w+w,i=0;u_metaballs[i].x>-1000.0;i++)
d=min(d,length(pos-u_metaballs[i].xy));
// if outside range ignore fragment
if ((d<r)||(d>r+w)) discard;
// otherwise render it
gl_FragColor=vec4(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0);
}
Preview: