What is the difference between object and node in Maya (scripting)?

Question

This question may sound silly I know, but I would like to know exactly what is the difference and in which way the hierarchy works in their case.

If I create for instance a polyCylinder and bind it to a variable

exVar = cmds.polyCylinder(name='cylinder_01')

And now I print exVar, I get a list with two Unicode string items: one for the name of the object and another one for the name of the node.

[u'cylinder_01', u'polyCylinder1']

If I go to the Outliner I just can see cylinder_01, I cannot see the polyCylinder1 item.

What do they mean? Is there any way to visualize them in the Outliner or the Hypergraph?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

cylinder_01 is the transform, which handles translation, rotation, scale, etc.

polyCylinder1 is the shape, which holds the vertices, polygons, shader connections, etc.

The shape is parented to the transform. You can see it in the Outliner if you select Display > Shapes