Better Access to and Visibility of Node settings

Node settings such as composite mode, colour space etc are impossible to know without right clicking on a node and navigating through a long dropdown menu.

I propose 2 changes. First pull a lot of these settings out of this right click menu and place them in the side pane on the right (or the info pane could work also). The second is to give some kind of visual indicator to each node that has had these properties altered from their defaults. For example if you want to know the composite mode of nodes in your graph you need to right click on every single one and navigate through the menu. If you need to do this often it gets very cumbersome, very quickly.

Here's a mockup of how I think this could look

Screenshot 2024-03-28 at 17.04.57.png (515.49 KiB) Viewed 303 times

In this example, the settings of the currently selected node are displayed in the side panel much like clip settings on the edit page. I've made it so node colours are represented by changing the entire background colour of the node. This is MUCH easier to see at a glance. I've placed a white bar through the middle of the node to represent that this node has a composite mode applied and I've added a dotted white line around the inside of the node's frame to represent that it has been set to a non default colour space.

I think what I've done here is a bit ugly. But this should give a good idea of what I mean. I'm sure BMD can come up with a nicer looking version of these visual indicators.

This would mean that with a quick glance you can see every node that has had one of these settings changed and by simply selecting the node, you can see what the settings have been changed to. No awkwardly navigating through menus, one node at a time.

Thanks!

+1

Another great request that probably will get ignored by BMD

Anyway,
+1

I wouldn't mind this, but for the way I work, I generally only put one thing (one operation) in each node, and that node is labeled. So I already know at a glance what every node is doing.

There's kind of an unofficial rule at most facilities that each colorist needs to label his or her node structure, so if that colorist has to be replaced for any reason (like due to an illness or accident), the next colorist could come in, sit in the chair, and understand in 5 seconds how each shot was adjusted. That way, there's no loss of time in getting the project finished. A fixed node structure, where every single shot has the exact same number of nodes, helps facilitate this even more.

But I wouldn't object to a "Node Inspector" drop-down like this, as long as we could turn it off when not needed. I get why some people would like it, so from that perspective, I'd be for the change.

I wouldn't mind this, but for the way I work, I generally only put one thing (one operation) in each node, and that node is labeled. So I already know at a glance what every node is doing.

There's kind of an unofficial rule at most facilities that each colorist needs to label his or her node structure, so if that colorist has to be replaced for any reason (like due to an illness or accident), the next colorist could come in, sit in the chair, and understand in 5 seconds how each shot was adjusted. That way, there's no loss of time in getting the project finished. A fixed node structure, where every single shot has the exact same number of nodes, helps facilitate this even more.

At my place we have pretty much exactly the same approach. But we still have many instances of node composite modes or nodes set to other colour spaces (HSL, HSV are very useful. Or converting for LUT designed for another scene space). There's no clean way to label all of these with such a limited label length. Plus it's just slow and therefore easy to skip when working fast.

But I wouldn't object to a "Node Inspector" drop-down like this, as long as we could turn it off when not needed. I get why some people would like it, so from that perspective, I'd be for the change.

Agreed. That's why in this example I've added it as a tab to the side pane. It could be flipped off and ignored by anyone who doesn't care for it. Plus I guess there's also no reason to remove these options from the right click menu. They could live in both places.

There's kind of an unofficial rule at most facilities that each colorist needs to label his or her node structure, so if that colorist has to be replaced for any reason (like due to an illness or accident), the next colorist could come in, sit in the chair, and understand in 5 seconds how each shot was adjusted.

That wouldn't change.

There's no clean way to label all of these with such a limited label length.

Exactly.

+1

Here's a revised version based on an idea from Daniel Stuebner over on Lift Gamma Gain.

I've removed the lock node option and replaced it with a master lock toggle plus various individual lock settings. The master lock toggle would lock the node just like the lock node option currently does. But the other locks will only lock specific settings.

So in the example below you can see I've locked the label name, node colour, colourspace and colour channels. This is a setup that is commonly used to manipulate the saturation of an image using LGG, HDR wheels or curves. Now I can reset what I've done in this node but all settings that I've locked will remain. So If I'm not happy with what I've done, I hit reset, and try again. Currently I would have to re-apply all of these changed settings through the right click menu.

Node settings.jpg (174.94 KiB) Viewed 202 times

This is a great addition to this idea.