Gaffer: Installation, Interface and Basic Scene Setup [2/8] (Patreon)

April 16, 2024 update: Gaffer 1.4 is out and it's no longer necessary to download a special Cycles build. The official release is available here. 

We'll be working on Windows, so download that build, extract the archive and then run gaffer.cmd in the /bin folder. You'll be greeted with the default Gaffer layout.

1. The Viewer (for viewing the 3D scene and renders).2. The Graph Editor (equivalent to the Node Editor in Maya or Network View in Houdini).3. The Node Editor (equivalent to the Attribute Editor in Maya or Parameters in Houdini).4. The Hierarchy View (equivalent to the Outliner in Maya or Scene Graph Tree in Houdini).

Each pane in the UI has tabs that allow you to switch to other panels. For example, the Graph Editor pane has a Light Editor tab that can be used adjust the lights in your scene. We'll cover these features as we get further into this series.

Let's set up a simple scene to see how everything works!

In the Graph Editor, press Tab. A list of all available nodes will pop up (just like Maya and Houdini). You can either browse through the menu with the mouse or start typing the name of the node you're looking for.

To begin building our scene, let's add a Cube. Navigate through the menu like this, or simply type cube and press enter.

We've now got a Cube node and the Node Editor updated to show its parameters.

But where is it?! We need to Focus the node to see it in the Viewer. This is a similar concept to enabling the Display flag in Houdini. Mouse over the node and click the focus circle that appears.

Behold the cube!

Note than you can rotate, pan and zoom around the scene using controls familiar from all 3D apps.

Next, let's add a Sphere, plus a Plane to act as a floor for our scene. Follow the same process as we used to create the cube.

Note however that only one object is showing in the Viewer because just the cube is focused. We need to add a MergeScenes and connect each of our three objects to it. Focus the MergeScenes node and now we can see all three objects together.

Well, we could see them all if they weren't all on top of each other! Let's move them around a bit. Activate the SelectionTool from the left-hand toolbar in Viewer and click on the sphere. Switch to the TranslateTool and move the sphere, then the cube and finally rotate and resize the plane. You can snap the angle of rotation by holding the Ctrl key.

Beautiful! This is just the basic OpenGL Viewer though, so it doesn't look too fancy. Let's fire up a Cycles render and start some lookdev in Part 3.