A scene graph organises scene elements and their relationships, often as a hierarchy of parent and child nodes.
An arrangement behind the visible image
A scene might contain a group for a sculpture, with separate children for its body, an animated detail and a label. A node can carry a transform even when it has no visible mesh. The hierarchy gives the application a way to organise related parts and combine their transforms into final scene positions.
The structure explains surprising movement
If a parent rotates, its descendants usually inherit that rotation. A child’s local transform is combined with the transforms above it. Two objects that look adjacent on screen may belong to completely different branches. Conversely, a hidden organisational node can influence a whole assembly. Inspecting the hierarchy can therefore reveal problems that are hard to understand from the rendered image alone.
Keep an exported artwork understandable
When preparing a multi-part GLB for Painta, clear names and a sensible hierarchy make it easier to identify the part that should move. Avoid adding unnecessary nesting simply to organise names, and preserve the relationships required by animation or skinning. The diagram shows a small hierarchy and the corresponding assembly: the connecting lines explain relationships, not physical rods that appear in the published work.
Related concepts and further reading
Khronos: scene nodes and transforms
Continue with Three.js for a closer look at this part of the experience.