So, dicing will add subdivisions to a mesh at rendertime but for the base shape of the mesh to be smoothed you have to set the Subdivision Scheme setting on a "mesh" node to "catmull clark". No problem I thought - and had the mesh node smoothing my mesh at rendertime while using my own custom setup but I am now investigating the "component builder" setup and have found that the mesh node isn't having any effect. Displacements work, but the base-shape remains faceted. I've even tried it with just a simple cube and nothing I do will turn it into a sphere. Please fill me in if you know of a solution.
P.S. I've just noticed in my tests on the cube that when I set the subdivision scheme to catmull clark the normals are being changed though the shape is not (see the images below). I get the same result if I turn on the "treat polygons as subdivision surface" option on the "componentgeometry" node and it's happening with the more complicated geo I've been testing with that is imported from an external file.
Image 1: no catmull clark smoothing and no displacement. Image 2: catmull clark smoothing enabled and no displacement. Image 3: catmull clark smoothing enabled and displacements applied.
FYI - it seems that my scene itself was corrupted in some way. When I copy the relevant nodes from the scene in which I had smoothing working to the scene I was having problems with, it wouldn't work, but when copying over to a brand new scene it would. Plus, rebuilding the asset with component builder in a new scene likewise produces the expected result. I guess I'll just have to rebuild everything.
