I’m looking at loads of node examples, just trying to learn how everything affects each other to better understand the system.
In a lot of examples people are using an ‘Output’ node to see the effects along the node chain. This doesn’t seem to exist in 2.78. What should I use instead?
Thanks.
The output/viewer nodes are compositing nodes, not a material node
For previewing Cycles material nodes, activate node wrangler addon. Then ctrl+shift lmb on a node to insert an emission node between it and the output. I don’t think it works with shader outputs (green) but should work with anything else. Remember that it will only display 0-1 range properly, but other values can be read/examined through a testrender.
I have the wrangler, but it doesn’t give me what I was after. A view node in textures could be really handy for working out what’s going on in complex textures. But I think I understand why there isn’t one, the processor load could become excessive very quickly.
To get the viewer node with the node wrangler addon, you have to hover your mouse cursor above the node you want to view, and then CTRL_Shift_leftclick. That node will then automatically get a connection through the viewer node to your output. Do this on a shader node and it will connect directly to the output.
