Node Editor Improvements

V-Ray for Rhino V-Ray for Rhino :: General
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After testing the new Node Editor introduced in the latest V-Ray for Rhino update, I wanted to share some feedback and a few issues I’ve encountered:

  • It would be very useful to have the Triplanar node applied before Bitmap nodes (similar to 3ds Max), or at least allow multiple Bitmaps to connect to a single Triplanar node. Also, adding a UVW randomizer node could really help.
  • Drag-and-drop of multiple Bitmap textures directly into the Node Editor would significantly speed up material creation.
  • I accidentally deleted a material in the Node Editor and found there is no Ctrl+Z (undo). This is a critical feature that should be implemented.
  • Dropping a node (e.g., a Color Correction) onto an existing connection line should automatically insert it between the two nodes. Currently, all connections need to be redone manually.
  • Minor bug: when selecting a Bitmap, switching Texture Placement to “Mapping Source” and clicking the UV Placement slot on the right panel should display UVW Placement, but it does not.

Overall, the Node Editor is a great addition, but these improvements would make it much more efficient and robust.

Thanks.

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  • It would be very useful to have the Triplanar node applied before Bitmap nodes (similar to 3ds Max), or at least allow multiple Bitmaps to connect to a single Triplanar node. Also, adding a UVW randomizer node could really help.

Positioning the tri-planar map before the bitmaps is not going to be easy as the internal structure V-Ray uses is different. To achieve it we’ll have to show the shader in one way but export it to the renderer in another. Not impossible, but not easy to do and maintain.
The limitation preventing the use of UVW Placement nodes in the Node Editor will be resolved soon. We already have this working correctly in a dev build.

  • Drag-and-drop of multiple Bitmap textures directly into the Node Editor would significantly speed up material creation.

Noted.

  • I accidentally deleted a material in the Node Editor and found there is no Ctrl+Z (undo). This is a critical feature that should be implemented.

None of the V-Ray-specific editors support undo at this stage (sadly).
Implementing undo requires a significant refactoring and has been something on our to do list for a long time now.
The main challenge is we need to make it play well with the host-app-side undo. If we just handle it in V-Ray, undoing material edits will propagate scene changes to the undo stack in Rhino - which is suboptimal.
In any case we’ll bump the priority of this task.

  • Dropping a node (e.g., a Color Correction) onto an existing connection line should automatically insert it between the two nodes. Currently, all connections need to be redone manually.

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Also noted. This should be relatively easy but the fact we have Local and Global textures (a legacy leftover) could get in the way.

  • Minor bug: when selecting a Bitmap, switching Texture Placement to “Mapping Source” and clicking the UV Placement slot on the right panel should display UVW Placement, but it does not.

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Caused by the same UVW Placement limitation I mentioned. Will be fixed soon.

Overall, the Node Editor is a great addition, but these improvements would make it much more efficient and robust.
Absolutely! We have a lot more improvements in mind but at the same time we felt the current state is presentable and worth releasing (as Beta).

Thank you very much for the feedback.
And keep it coming.

Here’s a video I recoded to show the basic functionality of the Editor. (I’ll post an updated version once we release an improved version of the product :slight_smile: )

Konstantin

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Hi Konstantin,

thanks for your reply and for the very helpful video.

Using V-Ray for Rhino on a daily basis for many years, we can say we’re genuinely satisfied with how the tool is evolving. The progress on the node editor is clearly going in the right direction.

That said, considering intensive everyday use, there are two aspects that stand out as the most critical for us:

  1. A unified Triplanar node. The current situation recalls the limitations we had before the node editor existed - specifically, not being able to rely on a single, consistent triplanar solution. If the node is before or after the bitmap, it does not change a lot.
  2. Bitmap handling, particularly improving how bitmaps are imported and managed within the node workflow.

Other points are definitely useful, but these two would have the most immediate impact on efficiency and usability in production.

Thanks again for your attention and for the ongoing development.

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A small hotfix was released yesterday - 7.3.1.
Along with some bugfixes we were able to squeeze in a couple of Node Editor improvements like support for all the UV Placement sources.