Jarred Love covers some fundamental concepts and a tip for working with shape nodes within a rig.

When you create an object in Maya, a bunch of nodes comes along with it. One of those is a shape node. While this might seem a little odd to new users, it’s essential to understand the underlying architecture for a lot of workflows in Maya, especially rigging.

Parenting and Reordering Shape Nodes.

Jared Love covers some of the basic concepts behind shape nodes. He also offers a handy tip for working with them in as controllers in an FK chain, such as parenting and reordering them.

Shape Nodes in Controllers.

“I thought this would be a nice short video to do since I’ve never really seen anyone mention reordering control curve shape nodes. Working this way, you can get better pick walking in an FK chain of controls.

Also covered in the video is a bit of the fundamental principle of what shape nodes are in Maya so that you can better understand their behavior.