Can't view cycles node groups

[joni_giuro]

When I switch to vray the "Shader Editor" menu item disappears and is replaced by the "V-Ray node editor" menu item.

I mean this item here:
image.png

This makes sense but the vray node editor misses a feature that would be useful when converting materials: you can't expand node groups.

Example - I got this model from blenderkit and it has a node group called "Fabric" in the material nodes. If I'm using cycles, I click on the node group and hit tab I can see all the nodes inside of it.

Original Material
image.png

Tabbed into the node group:
image.png


Once I switch the render engine to V-ray, I can no longer tab into the node group and see what was happening there so I would have to guess or recreate the material from scratch.
Not a huge deal but it would be great if we could still see what is happening inside the group.

Thanks for your time

[daniel.kapsazov]

Hello joni_giuro, This is a great point, and this specific situation will be taken into consideration on our end once work on a material converter begins.

At this point, the only workaround I’ve found for keeping the group nodes active is to open the materials in different windows before switching to the V-Ray Node Editor. This way, the original state of the Cycles node tree will remain preserved in one window while you work in another. Here’s an example of how this works:


blender_2025-01-09_15-25-55.gif

[joni_giuro]

Hi daniel.kapsazov , thanks for looking into it and providing a workaround.

Glad to hear that you have a material converter on the roadmap.

Keep up the good work!

J