Subtitles of the Movie

The last plug-in we'll look at is called Dicer. Dicer is a utility plug-in which means it doesn't do anything all that spectacular by itself but it does enable other plugins and deformers to work better with certain models. In this scene we have a model that is made up of relatively few polygons. Some plugins, like Mr. Nitro, are largely dependent upon the resolution on the mesh of the object it's exploding and in the next chapter we'll be looking at deformers, which twist and bend your model and if you want a smooth deformation, one without kinks, then you'll need a dense enough mesh to handle the manhandling of your model. So what Dicer does is break up the surface of your model into a tighter mesh. Let's go up to the Plugin Menu and add Dicer and look at its controls. Here is where you can add more longitudinal and latitudinal resolution. In other words, make a denser grid out of the mesh you're starting with. You have the options to triangulate the mesh, which divides all of the polygons even more and you can have Dicer create the new mesh within both Animator and the Camera application or just Camera with this option to dice only when rendering. We don't want to do dicing only in Camera, so we'll check that off. Then, like many of the plugins, you simply attach the model you want diced to the Dicer Parent. Click OK to finish adding the Dicer Plugin to our scene. Let's turn our Camera Window Shade Mode to Wireframe and we can see how simple our mesh is so far. Now I'll parent the model to the Dicer Object. And the mesh changes. Notice it adds polygons by dividing the native mesh. It does not make it a smoother mesh so you won't get a rounder model. Now, the Dicer Plugin is a live plug-in. That means it is active in doing its re-meshing for every frame. If you're satisfied with the job Dicer is doing and you don't think you'll need to change its parameters, then my suggestion to speed things up is to export the Dice Model and then re-import it into your project. This removes the overhead of Animator constantly re-dicing the model for every frame. To export the model, select the Dicer Plugin in the Project Window and you may want to rename it at this point. Let's call it Diced Rocket. Then go up to the Menu Bar, Objects Menu and select Export Park Fact Object. And then name the file. A dialog will appear. We only need to export the Dicer Plugin; not its Child Object. And click OK. Let's turn off Dicer and its Child in the Project Window. Then back to the Object Menu to import the new Parked Model like this. And now it's a model, not a plug-in in higher res and ready for animating. Dicer has done its duty.