Maya 2014 Highlight - Node Editor Updates

Hey Maya people -
As you've most likely heard by now we have offically announced the 2014 releases of all of our products.  Maya 2014 in particular is IMHO a pretty strong release.  I was at GDC last week showing the new features to a bunch of different game developers and the feedback that I got was very positive.  This is one of those releases where there is a bit of something for everyone... modelers, animators, technical artists, and even programmers!  It's also one of those releases where you have to dig down a bit to discover some of the more useful updates.

http://gan.doubleclick.net/gan_click?lid=41000613802075415&pubid=21000000000634342&lsrc=17
I'm not going to cover each feature in one post.  I've gotta stretch it out and make it last!  But over the next several weeks I'll be going over some of the specifics on the various new and/or improved features in Maya 2014.  This week I'm going to cover the much needed updates to the Node Editor.  The changes in the Node Editor were focused on workflow and visual feedback.  I've always believd that it's often times the little things... the things that simplify your workflows that are often appreciated more than some of the higher profile new features.

---

Maya 2014 - Node Editor Improvements

---

Something that I don't mention in the video which is also very useful...  the new color scheme in the Node Edtior is completely customizable.  You can use this image as reference for which colors represent which types of nodes and which types of connection for those nodes.  This can be really handy when diagnosiing existing complex node networks.

UPDATE:  I forgot to include it in the demo, but there is also a handy hotkey (2 hotkeys actually) that were added for the Node Editor in 2014. If you select a node in the NE and hit either < or > (technically , or .) then it will select all of the input or output connections so that you can quickly move them in the graph all at the same time. It's a nice quick way of organizing the graph