1. A non-transitory program storage device, readable by a programmable control device and comprising instructions stored thereon to cause one or more programmable control devices to: receive, at a rendering system, a combination of animation elements to generate an animation for one or more nodes in a scene graph; determine, by the rendering system, a designated execution type for the combination of animation elements from a plurality of execution types, wherein the execution types include a sequence execution type that triggers execution of the combination of animation elements in consecutive order and a group execution type that initiates execution of the combination of animation elements in parallel; and generate, by the rendering system, one or more calls to a graphics processing unit (GPU) to perform the animation by executing the animation elements based upon the designated execution type.