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Extract Sub-Meshes

Intro​

Create a Shape by extracting specific child-meshes from another Shape. Any materials and animations are also copied across to the resulting Extract Sub-Meshes Shape.

This can be used to:

  • Extract different sections of a Duplicator and place them within a Layout Group.
  • Extract part of a Duplicator to redistribute certain Ids using an Apply Distribution.
  • Extract the Shapes contained within a Pre-Comp.

UI​

Common Attributes +

Input Shape - Connect a Shape to extract the child-meshes from. See Input List.

Indices - The indices of the Shape to extract. The Ids can be seen in the Mesh Explorer or by using the Draw Debug Information option in the Viewport.

Level Mode - The level to extract the child-meshes from.

Ignore Empty Sub-Meshes - When extracting meshes - ignore any Ids that are empty.

Example
  1. Create an Ellipse.
  2. With the Ellipse selected, click the Duplicator icon in the Shelf.
  3. Create an Extract Sub-Meshes.
  4. Connect duplicator.id→extractSubMeshes.inputShape.
  5. Hide the Duplicator.

Just the first and last indices of the Duplicator are extracted because those are the default indices specified. Try replacing first,last in Indices with 0:3 or 3, 6, 8.

Materials

Materials are copied from the Input Shape but can be replaced by checking Fill or Stroke in the corresponding tabs in the Attribute Editor.