"Texture Ouput," node in shader editor
When using Blender for texture painting, I often find myself manipulating the painted textures using math and mix nodes. It would be nice if there was an easy way to save the output from these nodes, as currently the only way would be to map the material to a plane and render it using an orthographic camera.
I propose a "Image Texture Ouput," node, similar to the "File Output," node we already have in the compositor, except with a "Save," button directly on the node.
6 Comments
I think it would be easier and more consistent to select nodes and than just use an "save" operator somewhere in the UI
* @Fynndus * not if you make complex shaders and want to automate the output. with your method you'll be selecting and clicking on a lot of things- this is the whole reason Substance Designer has an output node, they have no idea how you'll be using the maps so you create your own outputs and hook them up the way you want. When you hit "export", any output node you have gets exported as a texture all at once (and in some materials it could be a dozen texture or more).
* @testure * Exactly this. I frequently have to work with a lot of meshes and manage the combination and texture output in specific groups. If I have to do this all manually for every time I am changeing something it's really no use. Then it neither saves me time nor work.
'Rightclick -> Save as' should still be an option though. Sometimes you do want things just saved out fast and without an entire node setup.
Really good idea! What would also be greatly usefull is benefiting from the value inspector in the image editor.
I think this should probably be turned into another node graph (hopefully one that shares the same nodes). Would also allow for operations like blur and height to normal map generation. Writing to an raster texture is kind of outside the intention of the material editor.
* @Alex * I think they would either have to bring back an updated version of the "Texture," nodes that used to exist, or work it in to the shader nodes, but in parallel.
I'm going to actually work on a more in depth proposal for the hybrid approach and submit that, as I have an idea that might actually work.