Attached Link: http://sparks.discreet.com/knowledgebase/techdocs/searchable/techdoc_controller/Controller_tutorial

I dont know about Rhino, Maya, Lightwave or the others but more than likely, they operate under the same principles. In 3DS Max, the way I understand it, each object created carries its own information through its geometry pipeline, pretty much like a layered history build-up, each layer containing different information for that object and stored in the appropriate nodes for that object. The nodes are then accessed by the appropriate module to allow it to be manipulated by that module. Textures are sent to a node for a particular object that is accessed by the render engine module and tells the render engine the nature of that texture and how to render it. I would imagine this node is also accessible through the material editor module allowing it to selectively manipulate the information for every object created. So it knows exactly in what node to look at for each object to access the information allocated for it.

Message edited on: 04/08/2005 22:38