Grouping nodes and adding notes

Adding notes similar to MaxMSP or Substance Designer and grouping and coloring the groups like Unreal does it with the blueprints.
These 2 will make the workflow even better. :open_mouth: :open_mouth:

Thank you.

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If you didn’t know this, you can:

-press “c” to bring up the coloring menu to color any node

-select multiple nodes, right-click, and then select “collapse selected” which will create a new Comp (or group in your words) with all your nodes in it , already connected to an input and output. You can give this Comp custom parameters to control it.

-save this new Comp node as an external file (or blueprint in Unreal terms) by rightclicking and selecting “Save component”. You can drag this tox into any TD network, or load it at run-time. (see the common tab on the parameters dialog of a Base or Container Comp, external tox. You can also enter a http:// adress there to load the tox file remotely).

-add comments to each node by clicking the comment button in the parameter window, top right. (4th icon from the right). If you middle click a node you’ll see the comment. Nodes which have comments have a blue icon in the top-right,like this:
base-comment.jpg

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didnt know. THX :smiley:

right-click a Comp and select “Customize Component” to create custom parameters (compare these to the overall settings of a single Blueprint).

When i see the title, i thought of Nuke Node Group and Note,
Now in Touch we create DAT Text to explain what we do, but Note like Nuke are more clear to read.
And and some underbox (zone) is usefull to explain : Here is my Super Technique !!

screenshot of nuke network :

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I have an Idea how grouping&commenting should look like.

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+1 on adding background notes to the network editor like in nuke or unreal.

That be so handy for commenting works. !

Grouping nodes would be awesome.

Please make grouping hotkeys for adding and selecting groups too

Hopeful for Age of empires style Keyboard shortcuts while in network editor:

LMB drag select + CTRL 1 = form group 1 (overwrites existing group)
1= selects&highlights group 1

Holding control you can add to existing groups that are presently selected or highlighted.

+1

To echo nettoyeur, isn’t this what containers are for? If you have a standardized input and output to a set of nodes, shouldn’t they be encapsulated in a black box? (Also there are groups in TouchDesigner (press g in touch088), but I don’t think there’s a way to assign color directly other than selecting nodes in the group and then using the color menu).

+1 for Max-style ‘comment’ elements that are non-functional / network interface only.

I really miss the ability to leave comments in any size and any position all over my network and to style the network itself for clarity in the way you can in Max. I really do think TouchDesigner can be especially difficult to read, especially other people’s code.

When collaborating or sharing in other environments, comments can do a lot to expedite the process of understanding what’s going on quickly, and I think the comment system as it is now is ‘hidden’ too much to contribute to at-a-glance comprehension.

little bump

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Go Robot dropped this one on https://www.chopchopchop.org a little while back.

Backdropper
[url]https://chopchopchop.org/assets/ui/backdropper[/url]

It was published as a proof of concept but I though you all might find it interesting.

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Old post, but I would find the ability to group and label nodes -within- my Containers would be very nice.

@goblynn93 indeed a very old post - the Annotate and comment features have been added to official release over a year(?) ago already …

See Network Utilities: Comments, Network Boxes, Annotates - Derivative

Thanks for that. The only reason I posted was because all a Google search came up with is that old post. Was struggling trying to figure it out. The functions is not at all where I thought it would be, but its there, and its great. Thanks!

Hi @goblynn93,

out of curiosity - where were you expecting it?

cheers
Markus

I honestly had no idea where it would be. I dug through the menus and nodes and Palette and then went to Google search to see if there was anything. I never even thought to look in the RMB menu. I even started faking it by dropping Containers and scaling them up to fit the area I wanted to section out. But that hides all the network connections and wasn’t really working.

My Google search top hit was this forum page. (search was “touch designer group and comment nodes”)

I guess I should have looked at the RMB menu as that’s how VVVV does their loop areas, but I’ve never found much similarity between TD and VVVV.

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