Color ID mix node

The basic idea: Kind of like having a color ramp where the user can plug in textures in the color ramp widgets.

So, the alternative user interface for this functionality would look like this.

In this alternative version you would control also the ramp inside the node and the "snap" is replaced with the ramp controls we already have in ramps, such "constant" and "linear".

In the first version it is expected that you would add the ramp as a separate node before the Color ID mix if you need such functionality.

These are rough mockups and I hope the community would catch to refine the idea further. I can update this proposal after additional ideas. For example, should this have an alpha channel too?

How would it work?

1. You need a texture input for the node fac. That could be any image or for example procedural color noise that would be plugged into the Fac slot.

2. Next step would be to determine of how many color ID:s you would want to get out form that color input by using the Count slider. Or alternatively by adding more flags to the ramp.

That would create new colors to the bottom of the node, (or the ramp) based on the number you added to the "count slider"

3. Blender would detect the color values from the input texture and equally divide those between the number of colors we have selected in the count slider.

4. Now you can add any textures to the color slots, just like we do in the normal, already implemented Mix node that we have in Blender, but which only supports 2 color texture inputs.

5. Just like in mix node, you also would have the blend modes. (not sketched to the ramp version, but the drop menu should be over the "fac" slider.)

That would use the color texture inputs as layers and mix them from bottom to top with the blend modes. The blend effect would only be in the transition areas, between 2 textures (in case you have smooth transitions) or if you don't have anything in the fac slot, then Blender would mix everything with the blend modes.

6. The Snap checkbox in the nro 1 mockup would make the edges of colors be sharp, so that there is no transition at all. In the ramp version you would select "constant" in the ramp settings and have the same effect.

7. The output color would be a new texture mixed to be one using the method explained here.

There also should be a "Color ID Mix Shader" -version of this node, just like we have "Mix RGB" and "Mix Shader".

Target is to be able to easily do mixed materials without having to use too many nodes. This node would be able to replace all of these ramp- and mix nodes with only one node.