Creating & wiring nodes
Adding nodes, connecting them, and rearranging the graph.
Adding a node
Press Tab anywhere on the graph to open the search palette, type a few letters of a node name (circle, points), and press Enter. The node becomes a ghost on the cursor; click the canvas to place it. Right-clicking empty canvas and choosing Add Node... does the same.
Search matches names, keywords, tags and descriptions, and the palette groups everything by family. Right-click any node button in the palette to rename it, recolour it, retag it, or hide it from results.
Every node belongs to one of six families and carries that family's colour.
Wiring nodes together
Nodes connect through the sockets on their edges, outputs on one side and inputs on the other. Drag from a socket on one node to a socket on another and release over a compatible socket.
Mismatched values convert automatically where a conversion exists, so a shape can feed a renderer directly. See Automatic conversion for which conversions exist.
To disconnect, drag the wire off its socket and drop it on empty canvas, or right-click the wire and choose Delete Wire. To clear every wire on a node at once, right-click the node and pick Disconnect All.
Wiring decides what draws
Wiring a node into something that consumes its visuals, a renderer, a composite, an effect, also stops the source drawing on its own, so you see the result rather than the ingredient sitting behind it. It does that by setting the source node's opacity to 0, which is a value you can see on the node and in the Layers panel, and drag back up when you want both on screen at once. Cutting the last such wire returns that node to full opacity. Node controls has the detail.
Two-way wires
Most wires flow one direction, output to input. A bidirectional wire pushes a change on either end back to the other, which keeps two live controls in sync. Right-click a wire and choose Convert to Bidirectional, or Convert to Unidirectional to return it.
Some wires are computed, for example by a connection query on a layer pin. Those cannot be deleted by hand. Edit the query that owns them; the message names the node to look at.
Duplicate, copy, cut & paste
Select one or more nodes, then Cmd+D to duplicate next to the originals, Cmd+C to copy, Cmd+X to cut, Cmd+V to paste, or Backspace to delete. Paste also works from the empty-canvas right-click menu and drops at the cursor.
Cmd+A selects all, and Frame All re-centres the view on the whole graph. With two or more nodes selected, Collapse to Subgraph (Cmd+G) bundles them into one reusable node. See Subgraphs.
The node title bar
The bar across the top of each node is its handle. Double-click the name to rename it inline, then Enter to commit or Esc to cancel. The name is a label; the node's underlying type does not change.
The title bar also carries the cook badge, which shows whether a node recomputes on demand or every frame. See Cook policy.
Bypass (B) switches the node off. Effects pass their input straight through, generators stop producing, and this is the single on/off control for a node. Solo (S) isolates the selected node so the viewport shows only its result.
The node right-click menu goes further: Rename, Set Strength..., Reset State, Disconnect All, Select All, Pin to Panel, Save Selection as Node…, a row of colour swatches, and Convert to Expression to turn a node into editable code you own. On a subgraph node it also carries Edit in Window. See Convert to Expression.