More and improved node group features.

I've been working A LOT, with Blender's node groups feature ever since I started using Blender. Sure, they do exactly what they're meant to do but they're quite lacking when you look at the other nodes that are included in blender.

They don't have support for stuff like drop down menus and clickable buttons, stuff that we see all over the place on other nodes. The closest that node groups get to features like this is the normal node which seamlessly integrates itself into the node group when plugged into the input.

I wish we had more features like this to choose from because when your node groups start to become big, it gets very messy and it's hard to keep things in line. And frankly, it looks really ugly as well. Especially if you don't have color inputs to separate the rows of values your node might contain.

Examples: imgur.com/a/0n9mpsR

Hell, something as simple as being able to combine inputs that are next to eachother to get rid of the gap inbetween them, as seen on the mapping node would be such a big improvement.

Some ideas:

The ability to be able to cap how much of a value shows up.

In all inputs the value will always show up as 0.000 . No matter what you put the actual value at. A great example of where this is handled beautifully is in the custom properties. There, if you set the property and default values to something like 1 then it's always only going to show one number. If you set it to 1.0 then it's going to unlock again and show the main number + 3 other digits for fine tuning.

Being able to combine values.

I mentioned this before, *"Hell, something as simple as being able to combine inputs that are next to eachother to get rid of the gap inbetween them, as seen on the mapping node would be such a big improvement."*

This would be great because it would help with organizing your inputs massively.

Having the ability to seamlessly integrate parts of nodes into the node group.

Just like how the normal node integrates itself, it'd be great to have the ability to integrate different parts of nodes into the node group. Such as texture inputs, curves and color ramps. This would help break up the node group, make it look more interesting and also make it alot more straight forward and easy to use rather than to have text on the value inputs telling the user what that input is used for.

Buttons and drop down menus.

Oh man, having something like this would be a dream. I like to make my nodes as easy to use as possible. So to help the people who don't have a super pc, i usually include a "debug mode" in my nodes. What this does is that it only shows one part of the node at a time in black and white so the user can much more easily edit the node without experiencing a bunch of lag and having to wait for all of the other parts of the node to load in.

Sounds easy right? Well before they can do that they have to plug in the debug output into the material output's surface input and then use the value called "debug mode" to change which debug mode the node is in while also having no idea what mode they're in because there's no way of showing via text what debug mode you're in. It's just numbers like 0.1 and 0.2.

The best I could do to make it slightly easier and faster to use is to limit the numbers to . whatever number here so that you can use the arrows on the left and the right side of the value to switch between the debug modes.

And then I'm sitting there thinking, "all of this could be solved with a drop down menu".

For the button part, something like the "Clamp" button on for example some of the math nodes would be a good addition to make the node easier to use instead of having to use the cheaty version of limiting how far a value input can go to toggle something on.

Custom tooltips.

Instead of having the node values show "Input value used for unconnected socket." when hovering over them which isn't very helpful or useful at all. How about being able to set your own tooltips? It would be great to further clarify more specifically what the input is used for. Also taking this from the custom properties.

I hope you like my ideas, have any other feature on your mind? Leave it in the comments!