Now you can plug a color/factor directly in the shader/volume output. both will render as emission.
Another point here, is that it’s possible for most textures constructions to be rendered in the material viewport shading in real time, so there’s no need for waiting all the sampling from cycles.
The problem remains a bit the same… previews would work good for some nodes, bad for anothers, and meaningless for the rest. What probably could work, is to preview the active object with the down branch applied using the same opengl code from the viewport rendering…
Being able to optionally see a preview at any point in the tree would satisfy the need for one while keeping the nodes themselves in their current compact form.
Perhaps the shader editor could allow the placement of viewer nodes where selecting one brings a large preview of the part of the tree before it, just like in the compositor.
Perhaps a simple option in the viewport for rendering only the nodetree’s branch up to the active node could be an option. Simply click in an node and automatically it updates the viewport…
This could mantain the node editor in a more compact arrangement, and keep previews were they belong (with the object representation).
EDIT: just noticed that this is very similar to Richard Schweiger’s comment in the Facebook Group mentioned by @filibis.
I like that idea. Something like an o-scope probe that you connect to a link or socket. When connected overrides the material output to show what’s at the probe.
An efficient way to use such a tool would be a modal one where you hold down a key to activate the probe and while hovering over a socket or link it shows the output. Let off the key and it deactivates the probe.
A second key while active and the probe stays at whatever socket or link it’s hovering over. Press that second keybind to toggle it on/off or the first keybind to reset the probe.
A prototype of this type of tool might be possible to make as an addon, by managing a temp probe material and some trickery.
