jagenjo
Feature: DOCKING
In products like Substance Designer there are a few QoL improvements because the graphs are so huge and one of the big ones I would love to see here is "docking." That is similar to minimizing the node, but it parks it on the side of the downstream node and just displays the name. So, quite similar to the minimize the because it is hanging like a tab from the next node, it is just neater visually and they move together.
Would that be this? Or how?
Exactly! That would be amazing at cleaning up the graph when we have atomic nodes that require no parameters or additional input.
I am very fond in cleaning up and making things nicer. I never had "docked nodes" in any other node based softwares but I understand it could be a nice thing. Just to be considered that collapsing a node is already available, and the group node allows to drag them together adding a nice comment. And the subgraph is very powerful to hide messy things. So an implementation for this should consider node sizing with slot distance (a collapsed node at now is taller than the slot distance) and without a group we have to select multiple nodes to move them at once. Should be possible to have a docked node only when it has a single output slot? A well done implementation would surely be useful for someone even if I personally don't see it essential. I personally would instead try to convert subgraphs in callable functions, improve the groups and work on better auto alignments.
In software like Substance Designer only certain nodes can be docked, and perhaps that is how you can keep this from getting unwieldy. The docked node acts like part of the parent node when moved about, and this can help so much when you have a lot of little single-function nodes hanging around. I am currently exposed to this project via ComfyUI and they do not have subgraphs at this time, so the docked node is really something I would love to see there to help with the visual distractions.
Blender solved this by just having a input-box in the component itself -
as long as there is nothing connected to this input..
@sefgit what would be the visual / use-case difference for you between collapsed group and a sub-graph?
My understanding is that "sub-graph" is to separate source code as modules. While "grouping codes" is in one module only. Thus collapsable groups might organized nodes neatly. More canvas space available for more nodes but still having great overview of whole system.