Basic Layout

Library Sidebar

Node Menu Sidebar

Node Canvas

Bottom Menubar

 

Basic Navigation

Click anywhere on the node canvas to pan it.

Use your scroll-wheel to zoom in and out, centered on your mouse cursor

 

Creating a 2D Node

Choose a Circle from the Library sidebar menu

Click on the node palette to move it.

Create a 3D Node

Click on the Output Parameter of the Circle Node (without dragging).

Move your mouse cursor to the righthand sidebar menu.

The sidebar menu has filtered the nodes so that only nodes that can receive the Circle Shape Output are displayed.

While hovering over the node sidebar menu, use your scroll wheel to scroll down to the Extrude node.

Click once on that node. The Extrude node should appear on the node canvas just to the right of the Circle.

 

Repositioning Nodes

Click on the node palette header bar or the thumbnail at the bottom of the palette and drag the node palette to a new position.

Move the Extrude palette to the left of the Circle palette, the connector between the two will wrap around to show that this is a directional relationship, i.e., the output of the Circle Shape “flows upstream” to the input of the Extrude node.

 

Adjusting the Node Thumbnail View

Mouse over the upper-righthand corner of the thumbnail at the bottom of the Extrude palette.

After a small orange sphere appears, click and drag the sphere to orbit the thumbnail view camera.

Dolly the thumbnail view in and out by holding down the ⌘ key (MacOS) or the control key (Windows) before clicking and dragging.

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Transformation Parameters

Open the Transformations foldout in the Extrude’s node palette.

Click on the Trans_X parameter and slide to the left and right.

Control Parameters

Open the Controls parameters foldout on the Extrude node palette.

Click and drag the Extrude [Y] parameter. The hight of the extruded Cylinder will increase.

 

Node Stats

At the bottom of the Extrude node palette is a display showing the number of vertices and triangles in the output mesh.

Open the Geometry foldout on the Circle node palette.

Increase or decrease the number of segments using the segs parameter slider.

Notice the number of verts in the Circle stats display is updated, as is the mesh stats for the Extrude.

Bottom Menubar

Click the first button on the menubar at the bottom of the Node Graph Editor window. This will re-fold all the parameters foldouts that you have currently open.

Clicking on the next button, the “”Close All Tools” button, will hide any Material nodes, Tool nodes and Shape Nodes.

Clicking on the third button will show all nodes in the Graph.

Note the stats summary displayed on the right side of the bottom menubar. This is the count of vertices and triangles that your entire model will have when built.