Sub Mesh
Meshes in Cavalry can contain a hierarchy of other Shapes within them. We refer to these meshes as ‘Sub Meshes’. This hierarchy is a tree structure, much like the Scene Window, only it exists inside a Shape.
For example, Text consists of Lines, Words and Characters, a Duplicator is built of many Input Shapes and SVGs can have any number of layers. The Sub Mesh Behaviour provides a way to access and affect these individual meshes by specifying the level(s) within a hierarchy.
Position - set the X and Y position. 0,0 is in the centre of your comp.
Rotation - set the rotation (in degrees).
Scale - set the X and Y scale values.
Visibility - affect the sub shape's visibility on a per shape basis.
Time Offset - set the animation curve for duplicates on a per shape basis. Tip - connect a Stagger node
Center Pivot - centre the pivot to each sub mesh's bounding box.
Deformers - a list of connected Deformers.
Filters - a list of connected Filters.
Level Mode - these presets set the Level values for you:
Custom... - manually set Levels attribute.
Text (Lines) - sets Recursion values of 1, 1.
Text (Words) - sets Recursion values of 2, 2.
Text (Characters) - sets Recursion values of 3, 3.
All - sets Recursion values of 0, x where x is the highest depth in the Shape's hierarchy.
The Level Mode is just a preset. For example, the Text (Words) mode just sets Level values of 2, 2 which may also be valid for an SVG.
Level - set the level within the Sub Mesh's hierarchy to affect. It's also possible to set a range here - this is useful, for example, when overriding color on an SVG. You may want to set everything on levels 1 and 2 to green but leave everything on level 3 untouched.
As the Level value increases the Sub Mesh travels deeper into the Shape's hierarchy.
Sub Mesh also has Fill and Stroke tabs. They are identical to those found on Shapes apart from two exceptions.
Replace Fill/Stroke - when checked the Sub Mesh will overwrite any materials on the shapes it is connected to with the Color and/or Shaders set in this tab.
Fill/Stroke Overrides - see Color Material Overrride and Alpha Material Override.
Levels for Text are as follows:
Line.
Word.
Character.
Example usage:
Create a Text Shape.
Create a Sub Mesh node.
Connect subMesh.id > textShape.deformers
Set Position Y on the Sub Mesh to 30
Right click on the Falloff attribute and select 'Add Falloff'.
When you animate the Falloff through the text each letter will move up 30px.
