I like nodes. I have always liked nodes. Nodes evoke flowcharts, which I also like because knowing where I am, where I’ve been, and the choices I have is something that calms me.

I also like layers, but layers are greedy. One layer wants all of my time. It stretches over everything that came before it. I like layers less than nodes.

I’ve run into a lot of nodes recently. First there was Blender, with it’s “node everything” approach, although I’m still working my way through the most basic node functionality, texturing.

Then came Resolve Fusion. I was adding visual effects to video in a node-based way and I could see everything that I had done, and could even re-use nodes without having to copy and paste.

Now I’m working with a terrain generation application called Gaea and wouldn’t you know it, it uses nodes.

Nodes seem to be the way of the future whereas layers are passe and a holdover from the days when production efforts like animation were done with layers. It’s a familiar paradigm that works “well enough”, so why rock the boat? Nodes are why. They’re just better.

But there’s something I really hate about nodes and that’s the fact that there are so many of them. No matter what the app, a single node has a single concern. A node usually operates from left (input) to right (output) and whatever that node has to do happens between the input and output ports. The result gets passed into the next node, and the next, and so on. It takes a good many nodes to accomplish something that might sound simple, but the upside is that once you know what a node does, how it can be configured, and how it works with other nodes, you’re golden!

But that’s a lot of information, and I’m not as good at retaining information as I used to be. I know in Blender that if I’ve exported images from Substance Painter I can use Node Wrangler to easily wire them into a material, and I might even be able to wire them up manually if I had to, but geometry nodes? Those would allow me to create a 3D model using nothing but nodes. I wouldn’t even have to switch into Edit Mode to push and pull an object to get it to look how I want it to look. But there are a lot of starting nodes and modification nodes, math nodes, transform nodes, generator nodes and so on. There’s too many nodes for me to know; does it exist, do I need to use another node to make it exist, and how do I get one node to work with another? In Fusion, there’s really a handful of nodes that can do a lot of heavy lifting in all circumstances, but I know that I’d eventually have to dive deep into the shadowy realm of Nodes I Don’t Normally Use in order to get an effect looking how I want it. And with Gaea…well, I can deploy a Mountain node to generate a mountain, but how can I get grass, trees, water, erosion, debris, and so on? How can I limit application of effect to a specific area when I can only work with sliders and numeric entry boxes? Does A plus B equal C? Or does A plus B equal Elephant, which in my limited experience seems more the case.

My only recourse has been to watch videos, read documentation, try them, and then laboriously document each and every node. I have watched many a video in which the creator deploys nodes with skill, and when doing so I understand the where and the why. Later, should I try and work out a plan on my own, that previous knowledge escapes me unless I have a comprehensive Rolodex of nodes to refer to: where to find them, what they, what they accept as input and emit as output, and how they react with nodes connected on either side of them. It works just OK, and considering the amount of work it takes for me to catalog these nodes, I get very, very tired doing it.

But I guess this is what I have to do in this new node-forward society I find myself in, so I will continue to scout for information on individual nodes and write down what I learn in a way that makes sense to me and, hopefully, future me.