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Table Of Contents
3 At the top of the Hypergraph panel, select the Scene Hierarchy icon to
ensure the Hypergraph is displaying the scene hierarchy.
4 In the Hypergraph panel, select View > Frame All.
The Hypergraph displays the hierarchy for all of the objects in the scene.
This approach to viewing the entities in the scene provides a very
graphical approach to viewing all of the various nodes in your scene.
In the Hypergraph, each node is represented as a rectangle labelled with
an icon that denotes the type of information it represents (for example,
surface, shading, and so on). Each node has a unique name assigned to
it when it is first created. When you rename your objects, you are actually
renaming the node associated with that object.
Some nodes display with a line connecting them. This denotes that they
are in a hierarchy and have a dependency structure based on how they
were originally grouped.
For the temples column objects, the hierarchy displays each of the named
objects under a node labelled group1. Group1 is the parent node for this
hierarchy of objects.
In Maya, when the parent node (sometimes referred to as the root node)
is moved, rotated, or scaled in any way, the child nodes (sometimes
referred to as the leaf nodes) underneath are also affected.
When you select objects at the top level of a hierarchy and move them,
the objects within the hierarchy or group follow.
NOTE This system of nodes, attributes, and hierarchies may initially appear
somewhat complex, but it is one of the most powerful features of Maya. The
node based architecture provides flexibility and power to create complex
models, shaders, and animations.
54 | Chapter 2 Maya Basics