Autodesk 663B1-05A111-1001 User Guide - Page 86

5 | Nodes and attributes About > Nodes and attributes Related topics ™ "Two views of the scene: hierarchy and dependency" on page 87 ™ "Node types" on page 92 ™ "Change attribute values in the Attribute Editor or Channel Box" on page 95 ™ "View and edit the hierarchy of nodes" on page 105 ™ "Show inputs and outputs (dependency graph)" on page 111 Construction history As you work in Maya, most of your actions create nodes in the construction history of the objects you work on. At each point in your work, the current scene is the result of all the nodes you've created so far. For example, you can revolve a curve around a center point to create a new surface with a cross-section in the shape of the curve. When you apply this action to the curve, a new revolve node is created. The new node has the shape of the curve as an input. It has attributes that control how it creates the surface from the curve. And it has the resulting surface as its output. This chain of nodes, from the curve to the revolve node to the surface, is called the surface's construction history. The most important thing about construction history is that you can change it. You can reshape the curve, or change the attributes on the revolve node, and the resulting surface updates automatically. Direct manipulation Much of working in Maya involves directly manipulating nodes and attributes using manipulators. Manipulators are visual objects that let you accomplish complex tasks easily, concretely, and visually by dragging handles and seeing the results immediately. Using the revolve example above, you can select the revolve node and edit its attributes (how it creates the surface) visually by showing its manipulator with the Show Manipulator Tool. CircleSweep AxisEndPoint AxisMidPoint AxisStartPoint Basics 86