Render Engine Node

There are times when I want to make my final render in Cycles but preview materials and textures in Eevee. For the most part, this works great, but there are some shaders that are not supported in Eevee, such as the Principled Hair shader. To preview my textures in Eevee, I usually temporarily switch to another shader, such as the Emission shader.

It would be great if I could make this switching automatic. I am proposing a simple node that lets the user switch materials based on which renderer is used.

This would have a single text input field specifying the renderer to check for, and a single scalar output connection, either 0 or 1.

For example, if the user has entered "cycles" in the text field, the node would output 1 if and only if the Cycles render engine is currently used. This output could then be connected to a Mix shader node to switch between different shaders.

Potential applications:

• Previewing textures in Eevee
• Using "fallback" shaders where the actual shader is not (yet) supported in Eevee
• Having control over how translucent shaders are previewed in Eevee (ex. adding transparency)