In Unigine, nodes are organized in a hierarchy that can be managed via the World Hierarchy window.
This window contains all nodes existing in the current world. Some of the nodes can be instances of the asset files: meshes, sounds, terrains, instanced nodes, nodes stored in the *.node files.
When you add a new node to the scene via the Menu Bar (the Create item) or by dragging it from the Asset Browser, this node is automatically added to the nodes hierarchy and displayed in the World Hierarchy window.
The World Hierarchy window allows filtering nodes by names, collapsing nodes hierarchy (i.e., showing only the parent nodes and hiding the child ones), rearranging, reparenting, cloning, renaming, deleting or grouping the nodes.
To open the World Hierarchy window, choose Windows -> Toggle World Hierarchy in the Menu Bar.
To rename a node, right-click it, choose Rename in the drop-down list and specify a new name.
Renaming a node doesn't lead to renaming the asset it is linked to (if any).
To move a node to a specific position in the hierarchy, drag it with the left mouse button pressed.
Usually, nodes in the scene have hierarchical organization: each node (parent node) can have multiple children (child nodes). It allows you, for example, to change the transformation of several nodes only by transforming the parent node.
To collapse or expand the list of child nodes, click the arrow to the left of the parent node. You can also collapse all child nodes in the World Hierarchy window by clicking .
By default, a new node added to the scene is positioned at the root level of the nodes hierarchy. You can set up its inheritance in one of the ways described below.
The new-made parent is always placed at the root level of the hierarchy.
The child nodes positioned at the different hierarchy levels are placed at the same level.
To add one node as a child to the other in the hierarchy, or reparent a node, drag it with the left mouse button pressed to the desired parent node.
You can also move a node to a specific position alongside the child nodes of the desired parent: the node will be added as a child to this parent node.
The node is detached only from its direct parent and placed at the same level as the former parent.
To reset inheritance of a child node (i.e., detach it from all parents and place at the root level of the hierarchy), simply drag it to the corresponding position in the hierarchy.
Also, you can select the node and press Ctrl+D to perform the same operation. The new node will be created at the same hierarchy level as the original one, and have the same transformation. If the original node has children, they will be cloned as well.
Another way to clone a node is to select it, press Shift and drag the node's arrow manipulator.
Also, you can select a node and press DELETE to perform the same operation.
If you delete a parent node, all its child nodes will be deleted as well.
Deleting a node doesn't lead to deleting the asset it is linked to (if any).
Filtering nodes simplifies managing nodes in a large world. You can select which node types to display in the World Hierarchy window: click and choose the required node types.
You can temporary show all objects by clicking Enable All. At that, the current filter settings will be preserved.
When grouping nodes, a new dummy node is created, and all the selected nodes become its children. At that, the hierarchy of the grouped nodes persists.