About Nodes

The node view is a visual representation of the logic in which the elements in your scene are rendered. Each element in the Node view is called a node.

There are different types of nodes, each with a specific role:

Image Type of Node Description
Drawing

Reads the drawing files stored in your scene folder and displays them in the stage.

NOTE Drawing nodes are actually part of a bigger category of nodes called Generators, which are nodes that generate an image. Other generators include the Colour-Card and the Gradient nodes.
Transformation Applies a geometric transformation (translation, scale, rotation, etc.) or other types of deformations onto a drawing.
Effect Takes an drawing or image as its input, and outputs the image with an effect applied over it.
Composite Combines multiple drawings or images by laying them on top of each other to make a single image.
Camera Allows you to set the position of the camera relative to the stage.
Write

When rendering the scene, this node takes the image that is sent to it and generates an image file for each frame in the scene.

TIP You can create several Write nodes connected to different parts of your scene, and generate multiple renders when rendering the scene.
Display

The Display node is what displays the image in the Camera view.

TIP You can create several Display nodes connected to different parts of your scene, and select which Display node to preview in the Camera view.

One of the first thing you'll notice when opening the Node View about it is that, for every layer or peg you add in the Timeline view, a node is present in the node view.

A node representing one of the layers in the Timeline view is referred to as a Drawing or Element node. Its role is to display the drawing it contains.

As you can see, while layers in the Timeline view are ordered from bottom to top, in the Node view, Drawing nodes are ordered from right to left. This means that a node at the right of the Node View will appear underneath a node at its left.

Beneath the drawing nodes are a Composite node. The Composite node is what takes the image from every Drawing node in your scene and bakes it into a single image. It is also what determines the orders in which the layers are rendered. For example, if you switch the order in which they connect to the Composite node, you also switch the order in which they are rendered.

Beneath the Composite node are two nodes:

  • The Write node is responsible for generating images when you render your scene's frames.
  • The Display node is responsible for displaying your scene in the Camera view in Harmony.

If you rig your layers under pegs, those pegs will also have a corresponding node in the node view.

As you can see, when a layer is rigged under a peg, its Drawing node is rigged under its Peg node in the Node View. This is because in the Node View, information travels from top to bottom, all the way until it reaches a Write or Display node.

Effect node act as filters for the image information sent by drawing nodes. This means that they take an image as their input, and output an image with the effect applied on it, like so:

A Camera node acts independently from your scene's node system. It can be rigged under a peg, which allows you to animate the Camera by creating animations on this peg. Otherwise, it does not need to be rigged to anything to have an effect on the point of view from which your scene is rendered.