Selecting, Replacing, and Renaming Nodes

When you select nodes in the Node Graph panel, the selected nodes are displayed in a light yellow color. Various methods of selecting the nodes are discussed next. To select a single node, click on the node once. To select multiple nodes, press and hold SHIFT and then click on each node that you need to select. Alternatively, you can draw a marquee selection around the nodes to be selected. All the nodes that lie within the marquee will be selected. To invert a selection, choose Edit > Invert Selection from the menu bar.

To select all upstream nodes, press and hold CTRL while dragging a node; all upstream nodes that feed data to the dragged node will be selected. Next, click once in the empty workspace to clear the selection. To select all downstream and upstream nodes connected to a node, click once on the node and then choose Edit > Select Connected Nodes from the menu bar. Alternatively, you can press CTRL+ALT+A to select all nodes connected to the selected node. To select all nodes, choose Edit > Select All from the menu bar. Alternatively, press CTRL+A to select all nodes in a script.

Tip: Press and hold CTRL+SHIFT and then click to select one or more nodes without clearing the selection made earlier.

To select a node by its name, choose Edit > Search from the menu bar; the Nuke dialog box will be displayed. Type the name of the node in the search field and then choose the OK button; the node will be selected in the Node Graph panel. Also, the selected node will be centered in the visible workspace area. You can also use wild cards to select nodes by the name. You can use asterisks for multiple alphanumeric search strings and question marks for representing a single character search.

You can also select nodes based on their color, class, and label. For example, to select nodes based on the color, select a node and then choose Edit > Select Similar > Color from the menu bar; all nodes having the same color will be selected in the Node Graph panel.

Replacing Nodes
To replace a node, select the node in the Node Graph panel that you need to replace. Next, press and hold CTRL and create new node using the Nodes toolbar, shortcut menu, or the TAB menu; the selected node will be replaced by the new node.

Tip: To replace a node with the TAB menu, select the node in the Node Graph panel that you need to replace. Next, press TAB and then type first few characters of the name of the node. Next, press and hold CTRL and then select the new node from the TAB menu. If you are using a hotkey, you can not replace nodes using this method.

This article is taken from the Nuke Book: The Foundry Nuke 7 for Compositors.