What flows on the wires
Every wire carries a kind of value. Which kind you are holding decides what it connects to next.
Values fall into a small set of kinds. Several read two ways at once: a shape that also samples as a pattern, an image that also reads as a field. That second reading is what lets most pairs connect with no conversion node in between.
Each family links to its own page.
Plain values
Numbers, vectors and colours, as a single value or as a whole column of them, one per point or one per particle. A lone number fans out across a column where a node needs one value per item.
Text and true/false flags.
Transforms: position, rotation and scale bundled together, so things can be parented and moved as a unit.
Pin colour marks the family. Number-ish wires are blue, colour wires are pink. Two pins of the same colour almost always connect.
Families that read two ways
Collections (Collections): bundles of items with attributes. Points, particles, geometry, shapes, rows in a table. A collection is a spreadsheet where every row is a thing in the scene.
Analytic shapes: vector shapes (circles, text, drawn paths) that behave as a collection of items and as a resolution-free field you can sample anywhere. They render crisp at any zoom, and each row carries an
@analyticattribute marking it as one. See Analytic shapes.Fields (Fields): a value that exists everywhere in space. Ask what the value is at a point and a field always has an answer. A field returns a single number, a direction, or a colour, and any flavour reads as any other automatically.
Raster: pixel-based images. A raster samples as a colour field at any position and is also a fixed grid of pixels. Wire one into a colour-field input and it reads as a pattern with no extra steps. See Rasters (images).
Distance fields & volumes (Distance Field): a field giving the distance from every point to a surface. That makes it both a plain number field and a shape you can render, blend, dent, or carve. The usual way to build organic, mergeable 3D forms.
Distance fields & volumes (Volume): a field baked into a 3D grid of values, such as a cloud of smoke or a captured shape. Sample it like any field, but it is fixed at a chosen resolution rather than computed on demand.
Scene values (Gradient): a colour ramp authored by hand with draggable stops. It stays editable as a ramp and reads as a colour field where a node asks for one.
Numbers, signals & audio (Signal): a stream of numbers through time. Audio, an envelope, an automation curve. It looks like a number column and also carries timing, so it can drive things live during playback.
Gaussian splats: a collection of soft blobs that render together as a photoreal cloud. Editable row by row, and already a finished soft render.
Curves: a strung-together run of points, its own value kind rather than a collection kind. It reads as an easing shape you can wire into a slider to profile a value along a run, and it converts to and from a collection wherever a node wants the other form.
Hover a pin or inspect the result to see what is on a wire. Ask what the value behaves like and what it converts into. The second half is usually a free conversion away.
Conversions
Plugging one family into a pin that expects another inserts the conversion automatically. A raster becomes a colour field, a single number stretches across a column, a shape renders to pixels, a gradient becomes a field. You rarely insert a conversion node yourself.
Not every pair converts. A Signal will not become a 3D shape. Where no conversion exists the wire still draws but carries nothing, and the console warns that the pair has no adapter. That warning is the signal that a node belongs in between.