It would be useful if we could create instances of a node: all the settings would come from the original but the inputs of course could be re-linked. This would cut down a lot of manual syncing when I have to repeat the same task several times.
An typical use case is importing a PBR texture set and generating a new one by texture bombing: I’d need the exact same Fractal node settings for the base color, normal, etc textures so their outputs match. I might want to randomize base color intensity but of course not the intensity of the normal data. In that case I’d turn on intensity modulation so it becomes an input which I can override in the instances.
Thanks for the feedback! We have some ideas for something like this, but its part of a much larger project. For now, copy pasta is the way.
So, in the past I had similar issues with software: I wanted to manipulate objects in certain, unsupported ways. What saved the day more than once was the apps serializing the objects to the clipboard as text. I could write python post processors that read the clipboard, modified the text and copied it back to the clipboard, ready to be pasted inside the native app.
I see that the IllusGen nodes do end up as text in the clipboard but seem to be encoded in some way. I don’t know how big of an uplift it would be to turn this into JSON or something, but it would provide a lot of freedom for users. The community could produce workaround scripts for bugs or even set up entire graphs that would be impractical to create manually.