Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Navigating the Hypergraph is the same as navigating any Modeling window using the
familiar Alt key and mouse combinations for tracking and zooming. Subsequent chapters
will focus much more on these two windows. Let's have a quick look at the windows and
their icons. Later, you can refer back to this section as needed.
Hypershade
Just as the Outliner and Hypergraph windows list the objects in the scene, the Hypershade
window lists the textures and shaders of your scene. Shaders are assigned to objects to give
them their visual appearance—their look and feel, in other words. Through the Hypershade,
you can create and edit custom shaders and assign them to any object in the scene.
Maya uses render nodes to create shaders and shader networks for assignment to objects.
Render nodes define the characteristics of shaders, which in turn are applied to objects to
define how they will look when they're rendered. Shader networks are complex shaders that
rely on a network of render nodes to achieve special rendering or texturing effects.
The Hypershade (Window
➔
Rendering Editors
➔
Hypershade) displays the shaders
and textures in your scene in a graphical flowchart layout similar to the Hypergraph
window. (See Figure 3.22.) You can easily connect and disconnect render nodes to create
anything from simple to complex shading networks. The Hypershade window has three
main areas: the
Create/Bins panel
, the
render node display
, and the
work area
. The three
icons at upper right let you easily switch views:
Input connections
Input and output connections
Output connections
Graph Materials on Selected Objects
Clear Graph
Figure 3.22
The Hypershade
Toggle Create bar on/off
Show top tabs only
Show bottom tabs only
Show top and bottom tabs
Icon Size
Sort by Name
Sort by Type
Sort by Time
Sort in Reverse Order
Render node display
Work area
Create/Bins panel
