Material editor improvements

[magni2de]

Hi, Radiance.

I want to show you my vision of the Octane Grapth Editor.

Current disadvantages of the current Graph Editor:

1. All nodes in Graph Editor are similar to each other. If I look at the screen I can't quickly understand what's going on. The only difference between them is the tiny icon on the left side and the node title. Let's take for example RGB Spectrum and Glossy nodes. The first is a simple color node, and the second is a material node with a lot of settings, but on screen they look almost identical. This is very bad.

Solution: If possible nodes must have preview thumbnails. If this is the image node, it must have a preview picture. If RGB Spectrum, then color. Checker, gradient and other nodes which may have a preview picture must have it. Material nodes must have thumbnails.



2. Connectors on top of the nodes save space, but can't help to understand what they mean. To understand this I must to move the cursor on the circle input and wait a second until a tooltip will appear. This is very very much slow down a work, especially with big scenes.

Solution: it is necessary that their values were immediately visible. It is impossible to do in such way as now. I really like the Cinema 4D Xpresso editor :
http://c4dlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2 ... ion_01.jpg
http://www.maxon.net/uploads/pics/xpresso_08.jpg
http://biorust.com/tutorials/cinema4d-expresso/tut1.jpg
http://img.skitch.com/20110506-b4ha8y7c ... nmfptx.jpg


Please, look at my version of the new Grapth Editor interface.

PS. I also do not like some things in the Node Inspector, but currently I have no time to visualize how to make it better.

Sorry, English is not my native language.

[matej]

I kinda agree. The GE becomes a mess very fast. When the devs will finish the current big changes they are doing, they ought to give some attention to the shading workflow. There's a lot of improvements & features suggested that regard the GE all over the forums.

I personally like the visualization you did there. A right to left graph would allow embedding text & other data, while still conserving space. In this case nodes should be collapsable, so you could hide all the text & input pins, and that just the name & icon would be visible.

We could have a group container node, where you could throw anything you want and set arbitrary inputs & outputs for the group that should be available through the group container. This way you could throw all the nodes that are a logical group (for example; all the materials of some character in the scene) inside, thus make the place more tidy. The group should be ofcourse collapsable.

Example from Blender nodes:

[magni2de]

Blender nodes look almost perfect

[Jaberwocky]

Matej

I like the collapsible 'black box node approach to the nodes in your version.

make an unholy mess of a new material within the box, and then collapse the box to keep things tidy.

Great idea.

[necko77]

definetly RS should copy that from Blender

We live in COPY + PASTE (+ IMPROVE) time

we dont have time to loose developing something what is allready developed and work great !

[Refracty]

I like the compactness of the nodes that is offered by octane today.
I have to deal with more then 100 materials in my scenes, so to have bigger sized nodes will create a mess of my node graph making it difficult to navigate.

So to have bigger nodes wouldn't make an improvement for all situations and users.
But I can understand that some naming and preview material options could be handy for some situations or users.

But please, only as an "expand node" option.
The compactness of the nodes is something really nice at the moment.

[vinz]

definetly RS should copy that from Blender

We live in COPY + PASTE (+ IMPROVE) time

we dont have time to loose developing something what is allready developed and work great !

True, personnaly i like a lot the way blender node work !
easy and intuitive.

[ara]

Copy/paste, grouping and collapsing, instancing nodes and custom node colors would be great. Thumbnails would help if no other method of seeing what's going on at any given point of the node tree is going to be implemented.

But about the nodes themselves, ability to expand the node to reveal the connection labels would be the extend I would recommend going. If you put controls on the nodes you just end up zooming in and out all the time, instead of simply selecting. Controls are best kept in separate UI element. Node based compositing software like eyeon Fusion or The Foundry Nuke have pretty much perfected the node based workflow over the years, no real reason to look any further.

[gabrielefx]

definetly RS should copy that from Blender

We live in COPY + PASTE (+ IMPROVE) time

we dont have time to loose developing something what is allready developed and work great !

True, personnaly i like a lot the way blender node work !
easy and intuitive.

cut-copy-paste...and node instances

[abreukers]

Hi folks, all suggestions are greatly appreciated, however, since these changes here are easier said than done, we will concentrate first on implementing some absolutely necessary features such as sss, and also the plugins. Not everyone's wish can be fulfilled all at once, but I'm sure someone's wish has come true at some point already.

cheers.