Warp or portal nodes remove connection lines so there are less connections visible.
If connections are not nicely routed it’s difficult to read the graph.
The implementation I’d like to see is actually a “node action” that would hide the input connector, and another “node action” that would hide the output connector. This would effectively get the same results as a named reroute, but with more flexibility and seems to more closely align to the instamat ux.
Welcome to the community @arvinmoses .
It’s a feature that’s often requested and we’ve discussed it several times internally over the years.
The issue is that it makes the graph unreadable if you just look at the layout of the graph, this undermines the nature of a graph that is connected by edges/connections. It’s like undermining the linear nature of a layer stack. It makes things worse overall.
Imagine you have a really complex material, and all you see are disconnected islands of nodes. It’s awful! It’s comparable to “dock widgets” it’s an obvious solution that has negative effects that outweigh the problem that they solve.
It’s better to properly route your connections and we have ideas to make that better/automatic.
Thank you so much for the response.
As a push back - I do use this a lot in Unreal (on various professional projects on large teams), and I think it makes the graph significantly more readable. I do a few things such as make sure I go left to right, use descriptive naming. Furthermore I think you could add toggles to hide and show the connectors.
I also personally don’t feel like a disconnected connector is particularly hard for readability - similar to assigning a variable in code.
That said I’m curious to see what you have for automating graph reroutes. Mostly just vocalizing my experience, for consideration, but willing to see other methods before saying this is the only way forward.
Thank you again!
I’d like to see this too. I feel like what’s readable is a matter of opinion.
It’s like programming styles, some people find Allman indentation more readable than K&R or 1TBS.
I could understand Abstract not using the node in graphs they make public. I think it’s better to have the option though because any studio could just easily forbid it in a style guide. But since I’m not part of a studio, the only one who’s going to be reading my graphs is myself.
Right now, the internal consensus is a no around this and it will not change in the near future. We first want to explore all other venues.
Consider Abstract to be more aligned with thinking to companies like Apple than Epic or other companies. We have our philosophy around design and its ideas and are bound to those by first principle thinking.
I am locking this FR for now, there’s nothing more valuable that can be added to the discussion. Thanks for participating, once we change our internal opinion, we will reopen this discussion.
I have also edited the original post so it matches the format for our FRs and moved the topic.