Apple Shake 4 - Manual (Page 244)

244 Chapter 7 Using the Node View
Arranging Nodes
Shake has several commands to help you organize and navigate complex node trees.
Keeping your node trees clean and organized will save you much time later on, when
you’re fine-tuning a massively involved 200-node tree.
Grid Snap
You can toggle a grid in the Node View to line up nodes evenly.
To activate a grid in the Node View, do one of the following:
m In the Node View, right-click, then choose Snap to Grid from the shortcut menu.
m Open the guiControls subtree of the Globals tab, and turn on the gridEnabled
parameter.
When the Node View grid is enabled, the nodes you move are automatically aligned.
To temporarily activate grid snapping when Snap to Grid is disabled:
m Press Shift as you drag a node.
To temporarily deactivate grid snapping when Snap to Grid is enabled:
m Press Shift as you drag a node.
Grid Parameters in the Globals Tab
Five parameters, located in the Globals tab in the guiControls subtree, allow you to
define the spacing of the Node View grid.
gridWidth, gridHeight
Specifies how wide and tall each rectangle of the grid is.
Name Nodes Carefully
Here are some rules about names to avoid using:
• Avoid using spaces or non-alphanumeric characters (’, .!, and so on).
• Don’t name any node “color.”
• To avoid confusion, don’t give a node another node’s name, for example, renaming
a Brightness node to Fade.
• Don’t use a name that’s used by a local variable within that node.
• Don’t name nodes with single characters that typically have other meanings within
Shake, such as x, y, z, r, g, b, or a.