Values (range display) Shader Node
I'd love to see a node implemented that has just one job: display the value range of nodes connected to it - or alternatively, this feature implemented into nodes in general with an option.
I've created a quick mockup using a group and some editing. The node would have a single input that would accept floats and directly display min and max values and maybe a center. Maybe add outputs so you can directly use those as well. (To check vectors/colors you'd have to either split them in RGB or XYZ and use three Values nodes or have a seperate vector Values node...)
The reason why I feel this could be useful? Often times, I have no clue about the values nodes have or produce, May it be a texture node that changes its output range drastically with its settings, like a musgrave texture or an unknown image that I want to use the full range of values of without opening it in an image editor or connecting "less than"/"greater than" math nodes and manually scroll the values til everything turns black/white. Maybe I'm the only one who sees a need or at least use for this, maybe not. We'll see :D
2 Comments
This is kinda impossible to implement as accurate shader cause sampling one point can't know what does other points without calculating them.
it could be somewhat cheated like render texture from that shader and then calculate those values from every pixel, or sample some other random points
* @Pawel Piotrowski * Oh, you are right. It would have to be able to manipulate the "input side" of whatever it needs the values of. I see no sure-fire way to solve this now. The input side being as variable as it is, from simple, single float values to a volume in endless space, makes it even less possible to. Damn. I was probably too tired yesterday night. I guess I was just annoyed by the musgrave textures' output being all over the place pretty much unpredictably with changed values instead of "-1 to 1" or "0 to 1" and being unable to easily get it to "behave" with a map range node. because the input value range is unknown.