dublivert experiment
I played a bit with dubliverts using cycles. It took me some time to find out how to hide the original object, because in cycles it doesn't disappear by default. It doesn't help to move the object to another layer or to hide it because this would also affect the child objects.
I finally found that the object gets hidden if you assign it empty dubliverts, because these don't get assigned to the child objects
you can download the blend file here
See also:
icosphere deformations
blender particle experiments - light particles
blender particle experiments - paperplanes
blender physics experiments