Creating and Editing Nodes
A Maya scene is a system of interconnected nodes that are packets of data. The data within a
node tells the software what exists within the world of a Maya scene. The nodes are the building
blocks that you, as the artist, put together to create the 3D scene and animation that will fi nally
be rendered for the world to see. So if you can think of the objects in your scene, their motion,
and their appearance as nodes, think of the Maya interface as the tools and controls you use
to connect those nodes. The relationship between these nodes is organized by the Dependency
Graph (DG), which describes the hierarchical relationship between connected nodes. The interface
provides many ways to view the graph, and these methods are described in this chapter.