Moon Buggy nodes without children

Other Standards COLLADA
1

Looking at the example lunar_vehicle_tris.dae I see a lot of nodes without anything nested in them. Do they actually contribute to the visual scene or are they merely there to confuse me? :wink:

           
<node id="_left_hand" name="left_hand">
   <translate sid="translate">2.42846 -1.58929 0.029951</translate>
   <rotate sid="rotateZ">0 0 1 -12.4288</rotate>
   <rotate sid="rotateY">0 1 0 2.35336</rotate>
   <rotate sid="rotateX">1 0 0 2.77433</rotate>
   <scale sid="scale">0.003051 0.003051 0.003051</scale>
</node>
2

I don’t have a copy of the model handy to check, but if the character standing next to the moon buggy is skinned, some of the visual scene’s nodes may appear to be empty but they actually are bound to the skin of the character so you can make the character move. There may also be animations targeting the various nodes to animate them.