Glossary
gmax uses a family tree analogy to describe the relationship between objects linked together in a hierarchy.
Parent: An object that controls one or more children. A parent object is often controlled by another superior parent object.
Child: An object controlled by its parent. A child object can also be a parent to other children. An object that doesn't have any parent is by default a child of the world. (The "world" is an imaginary object that acts as the root of all other objects in the scene.)
Ancestors: The parent and all of the parent's parents of a child object.
Descendents: The children and all of the children's children of a parent object.
Hierarchy: The collection of all parents and children linked together in a single structure.
Root: The single parent object that is superior to all other objects in the hierarchy. All other objects are descendents of the root object.
Subtree: All of the descendents of a selected parent.
Branch: A path through the hierarchy from a parent to a single descendent.
Leaf: A child object that has no children of its own. The lowest object in a branch.
Link: The invisible connection between a parent and its child. The link is a conduit for transmitting position, rotation, and scale information from parent to child.
Pivot: Defines the local center and coordinate system for each object. You can think of links as connecting the pivot of a child object to the pivot of its parent.