mravella/maya_model

Michael Ravella (mravella)
Ardra Hren (ahren)


A shading network is a set of nodes with attributes. Each node's attributes can be "driven" by another node's attributes, and that's what a connection defines. Below are some of the basic constraints of our final model.


SHADING NETWORKS


User Interaction:

Set of currently selected objects
Left Click Selection - Overwrites old selection
Left Click + Shift Selection - Toggles selection and appends to set
Middle Mouse Dragging - Creates connections
Delete - Deletes everything in the buffer, and if it's a node, all connections to and from that node.
Name Change - Can change unique ID, but not to any other nodes' unique ID.



Connections:

Connect (Attribute->Time) to (Attribute->Time)
Attributes must be of the same type.
Types: Float, Vector, String (Vectors are 3 floats)
Allowed to cycle.
Attribute cycles cause deadlock, ie values cannot change.
All attributes in this cycle have same value.
Deleting a connection restores the driven attribute to default value.
One attribute can drive many different attributes.
Each attribute can be driven by at most one other attribute.
New connections override old connections.


Attributes:

Attributes can be driven by other attributes.
Same node can drive its own attribute.

Nodes:
Every node has unique ID.