Plate Insets

The Plate Insets operator is another greeble randomizer but is originally used by Random Starship to produce the ship's plating details. This was included in the add-on so users can take advantage of the Random Starship panel generator even without owning the add-on.

Figure 1

It is desctructive meaning the source mesh will be altered by the operation.

Here are the redo properties and what they do:

Subdivision

Increases the resolution of the base mesh so the random greebles can have more faces to work with. Essentially, more faces means more detail.

Figure 2

Plating Seed

Randomizes the plating details using a seed number.

Figure 3

Smooth

Smooths the source mesh.

Figure 4

Plates

The number of possible plating details to generate. The greeble pattern somewhat resembles the radial solver in Random Panels but is controlled and made differently.

Figure 5

If the number of plates have reached the maximum possible amount based on the Size and Adjacent Faces properties then it will no longer add new ones.

Size

This comprises of the min/max properties. This determines the size of the plate detail with lower values resulting to smaller details and higher values to larger details.

Figure 6

Tolerance

Normal threshold value which determines if plate details will expand or wrap over to faces connected to sharp angled edges.

Figure 7

Adjacent Faces

This has two options: Clear and Fill. Clear will generate more relaxed areas when creating the plate details while Fill will try and fill every space with plating details if possible.

Figure 8

Even Offset

Turns on or off even offset when extruding the plate details using the Depth property. Having this on ensures the extruded faces maintain a similar area. If you encounter geometry spikes, disable this option to resolve the issue.

Figure 9

Thickness

This determines the thickness or scale of the plate details. You can toggle the chain icon to get this value to randomize between the mix/max properties.

Figure 10

Depth

This determines the depth or extrusion distance of the plate details. You can toggle the chain icon to get this value to randomize between the mix/max properties.

Figure 11

Height Seed

Randomizes depth using a seed number.

Figure 12

Inner Margin

This has two options: All and Indent Only. All will add margins to all plating detail while Indent Only will create margins to indented plate details only.

Figure 13

Margins

This has two properties: Outer and Inner. Outer creates margin from the boundary edges of the selected faces, this will not generate results if the selection is the entire mesh. Inner creates margin from the boundary of every plate detail.

Figure 14

Reverse

Percentage value to reverse the depth value of every plate detail.

Figure 15

Reverse Seed

Randomizes the effect of the Reverse property using the seed number.

Figure 16

Triangulate

Determines how much of the faces in the selection will be randomized based on a percentage value.

Figure 17

Limit Smooth

This has three options: None, Base and Top. None will follow the smooth shading of the source mesh, Base will mark sharp the bottom edges of the plate detail and Top will mark sharp the top edges of the plate detail.

Figure 18

Use Mirror

Turning this off will use the entire source mesh instead of the mirrored version with the advantage of generating an entire plating detail in the symmetry lines.

Figure 19

For some random operators, disabling the Use Mirror toggle lets you generate random details for a complete non-mirrored mesh while for some like Plate Insets it creates a different effect entirely.

Clip Center

Clips the center vertices together in the x, y and z toggle using the distance threshold. This is used to merge the border edges of the plate details together in the symmetry lines removing the split detail there. You enable/disable this effect on a particular axis using the x, y and z toggles and control how much of the vertices beyond the symmetry lines are affected using the distance property.

Figure 20

Limited Dissolve

This uses limited dissolve on the source mesh which is primarily used to get rid of subdivision banding on cylindrical or organic surfaces.

Figure 21

You can, of course, use this to just lower the resolution of the resulting mesh.

Max Angle

The maximum angle threshold for the limited dissolve property. Lower values preserves more form and shape of the resulting mesh.