Node families & graph colours
Every node belongs to a family, and that family colours its header — so you can read what a graph is doing at a glance, before you read a single label.
The families
Each node sits in one family. The family tints the node's header and groups it in the Tab palette, so similar tools live together and similar work shares a colour.
| Family | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Generate | Makes new content from parameters — shapes, meshes, primitives, noise, fields, text. The sources a graph starts from. |
| Modify | Changes or combines existing content — transforms, effects, deform, booleans, maths, simulation. The bulk of a graph. |
| Data | Values, logic, and tables — numbers, comparisons, conditionals, arrays, conversions. The "wiring brain" rather than the visuals. |
| IO | Brings the outside world in and sends it back out — files, images/video, cameras, MIDI/OSC/DMX, render, export. |
| Structure | Organises the graph itself — subgraphs, nulls, routers, annotations. Doesn't change your content, just keeps things tidy. |
| Plugin | Nodes added by an installed plugin, so you can tell extensions from built-ins at a glance. |
A handful of nodes are internal plumbing (the automatic converters DNA splices in for you — see Automatic conversion) and never appear in the palette. You only ever place nodes from the families above.
Reading a graph by colour
Because the header colour is the family, a quick scan tells you the shape of a graph: a row of Generate-coloured headers feeding a long run of Modify headers into an IO export is a classic "make it → change it → output it" pipeline. Clusters of Data colour off to the side are usually the logic driving everything.
You can give any node a custom colour to group your own sections by eye — and Reset to Family Color puts it back. See Node controls.
Pin & wire colours
The same idea runs down to the sockets. Each pin is coloured by the type of data it carries, so a wire's colour tells you what's flowing without clicking anything. You don't need to memorise the palette — you'll absorb it — but the gist:
Pink / magenta — colour data (colours, gradients, and gaussian splats, which are colour-bearing points).
Teal — points and distance fields (spatial, point-like data).
Amber — curves and paths.
Lavender / purple — fields, rasters, and volumes (the "evaluate-anywhere" and grid types).
Numbers, transforms, materials, and the scene-config types each carry their own colour too.
When a wire's colour matches the socket you're dragging toward, you know the types line up. When they don't, DNA usually still connects them and converts automatically.
Pin shapes
Shape adds a second dimension on top of colour:
A round pin carries a single value.
A diamond or different shape marks a collection or a curve — many items travelling together.
So a teal round pin is "a point-ish single value" while a teal pin marked as a collection is "a whole cloud of points." Colour tells you what kind of data; shape tells you how much.
See also
The node graph — placing and wiring nodes
Search & the node palette — the Tab palette groups by family
Node controls — custom node colour vs family colour
What flows on the wires — what the pin colours actually represent