Sorry if this question has been asked before. None of the documentation I can find really touches it.
I get the impression that anything in Maya can be accomplished using nodes. For example, when you create a polygon-sphere it automatically puts together the three (I think?) resulting nodes you get, but you could do the exact same thing by putting nodes together yourself.
Am I right? It seems I could be much more effective with Maya if I understood this "under the hood" stuff. Is there any documentation that just goes ahead and *explains* things? So far everything I've found either assumes you know the theory, or stops short of really explaining it.
You don't need to keep reading in order to understand my question, but as an example of what I'm talking about, look at this discussion. Someone asks something about nodes, and the person who answers is an expert who doesn't point to any particular documentation, but just seems to have really in-depth knowledge by fiat. Where did this person learn?
