Different States of Nodes

• Circle1 is a not selected and not activated node.
• Circle2 is a selected node. You see it’s parameters in the Parameter window to the right.
• Circle3 is not selected but activated. If you right-click now, you will see another menue then when you right-click a not-activated node. To activate a selected node, move the mouse over it and press A or click the little star icon in the lower right corner of the node.
• Circle3 is like Circle1, but it’s viewer is turned of (to save performance). You can turn the viewer on and off with the circular icon in the left top area.
• Circle4 is “bypassed”, that means it doesn’t do anything, the data flows straight through it. This can be turned on and off through the arrow icon on the left side

Keep in mind, that “selected” and “activated” are two different things.
We will use this a lot during exercises.

Operator Flags

Operator flags are located around a node in a network editor. When you press SHIFT-t in a network pane, it shows nodes in a table format, where the complete set of flags is visible on the columns. Learn more about the flags and what they do here

TIPP:
Flags on SOP operators often cause confusion with beginners. As you can see, there are 4 little dots on the lower, right corner of a SOP node – left of the “activate” star icon. The purple is the render and the blue is the display flag. They determine if an object is visible to renderers or viewers (previews). As most SOP operators are being born with both flags off they don’t show up in renders and previews. Remember this and when – at a later point -your object just doesn’t render – there is a huge chance it has to do with those flags.