Node Designer UI

Main Menu Bar

  • Node Designer lets you save you nodes to disk. Under the File pulldown menu you'll find the import and export functions. The export format is a serialized Python dictionary that can be read by Node Designer and the scripting API to reconstruct a node from scratch.
  • The Node pulldown menu gives you options to create new nodes (New Node), Compile the current expression tab (Save Node) or Compile all the expression tabs currently opened (Save All).
  • The Help pulldown menu will give you useful links to Node Designer and the mpylib scripting API.

The Scene Tab

  • The Scene tab lists all the nodes created in the scene.
  • An expression tab will open up for each scene node you select, allowing you to edit multiple nodes at the time.
  • Double-clicking a node in the Scene tab will let you rename the node in your scene.

The Attributes Tab

  • Right click in the Attributes tab to dynamically add INPUT and OUTPUT attributes to you node.
  • The expression will be automatically be pre-populated with variables derived from the Node's inputs and outputs, and pre-cast to an appropriate type. So should you create an input of type "matrix" called "inMatrix", you can expect a variable in your expression named "inMatrix" to yield an MMatrix API object.
  • We've also created a a special "Python" attribute type. This will let you pipe Python data from one node to another with a single connection.

Editing and Connecting Attributes

  • Double clicking an attribute under the Attributes tab will let you rename the attribute even if it is already connected.
  • For array attributes, Node Designer will manage the multi-connections for you. To do so, select the objects you wish to connect, right click an attribute and choose "Connect Attrs". Node Designer will pop up an attribute window with a search field you can use to find attributes by name. Once you find the attribute you want, select it, and Node Designer will do the rest.
  • Array attributes also come pre-populated, which means you can write expressions that automatically adapt to each new plug.

The Storage Tab

  • The expression itself is nested into the instance of the node you are editing. This gives you full access to the node's internal values and functions.
  • You can add your own internal values in the expression. These values will remain accessible to your expression until a new scene is loaded.
  • The storage tab provides an interface to flag attributesfor “storage”, so the data will be available between Maya sessions. Within the expression, these values will be accessible as properties of self.
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The Log, Profile and Watch Tabs

  • ​​The log tab lists all the events that have taken place and is great to monitorfor error feedback.
  • The Profile tab runs the expression through cProfile in real time and gives you a breakdown of the time to execute all of your expression’s internals. 
  • The watch tab will let you see values assigned to variables in your expression in real time as the Maya scene evaluates.