While we’re still big inthe ‘feature improvement or problem thread’ department. I would like to make a request of my own concerning group nodes, now they do work like they’re supposed to and that’s good enough for a number of cases, but there’s something major that is lacking and is working on not making them as useful as they could be.
Providing that you have recently used them or used them heavily, you may have noticed that there are various widgets, ramps, and lists that you cannot embed inside of the interface, or the part visible when the node is closed. This forces the creator, if he desires to allow control over the thing that can be controlled with the widget, to create increasingly complex setups to emulate the behavior. Why do you ask, so that it can be adjustable from the outside.
Therefore, I propose a solution, as seen in the following examples, give each widget, list, and ramp inside of the group node its own special type of socket that the user can connect to the outside as seen here. (NOTE: the user would be able to give them custom names as well but that isn’t mentioned here.)
These sockets would ideally only appear if the nodes in question is inside a group due to the fact that they have no use otherwise, likewise, when the use connects them and closes the group, you will get as follows.
Forgiving the fact that the mockup is somewhat rough, observe how the widgets are placed inside of the node group interface, and other than the lack of sockets perform the same function as all of the others, allowing the user to control even these things from the outside.
Now to conclude, you might wonder how it might allow us to shave a lot of nodes out of our group setups, imagine you had this group node inside your larger group.
Since the only thing this group does is give user control over various falloff varieties (thanks to the use of math nodes), this is an example of a collection that would not even be needed in many cases inside a group if only the color ramp can be displayed in the group interface.
And that concludes my request, comments?