Maya Deformers Part 2: Removing A Deformer From The History

Part of the "deformer" node system within Maya is the built-in ability to delete a deformer node while keeping other history intact.  The history before and after your deleted deformer will get hooked up on its own without you having to do a thing.

Let's pick up where we left in Part 1 :: Rearranging Deformers.  We currently have a cylinder with 3 deformers in its history.  Let's delete one of them.  First we need to open a couple of windows so we can see what we're doing.

Open the "List of Inputs Operations" window.

Also, open the Node Editor and graph the input/output connections of our cylinder.

Let's say that we want to delete the sine deformer.
Simply right-click on the deformer and choose "Select".
This will add the sine deformer to the current selection.

In order to delete just the sine deformer,
we need to first deselect the pCylinder1 node.
Do this by pressing ctrl + clicking the pCylinder1 node.

The connections hook themselves back up automatically.
The important history before and after the sine node are linked together
as if the sine node were never there.
And, all your deformations will still work and nothing will be broken.