Texture assets
Currently it is not possible to mark a texture as an asset.
While there may be some equivalents to these in Shader nodes, this is not always the case. For example in the Voronoi texture, I can set four feather weights and have textures that I can use in the Displacement modifier for carpet, static cloth wrinkles, etc.
So to use these, I either have to use a placeholder object or some other means to capture this as an asset, or else use the usual Append or Link techniques to locate and include in my current file.
Assets are meant to be an organizational convenience. Textures are being ignored.
3 Comments
You can just make a node group out of it and mark it as asset.
I can slightly agree with you, what they say barely falls under addon territory. It's not that big of a deal to make an operator that does what they say. Although I can understand their desire to quickly slap a texture on a mat. Especially since mark as asset isn't available on the mouse2 menu of a group.
I doubt it is that simple. Assets in Blender are basically a tag affixed to a data-block, which the asset browser can pick up and register in its assets list.
There are only two available data blocks that can contain shader nodes: "NodeTree" (aka node group) or "Material".
Sources:
So either you create a new data-block in Blender's source code, with all the ramifications it implies, or you select your node and turn it into a group. Which is exactly what we already have.
RMB the data-block itself, not the node:
Maybe it could be different if the BF decides in the future to revive and modernize the Legacy Textrues system , but I doubt this will get under the radar for years.