2D Preview

The 2D Preview panel shows the rendered output of the selected node at full size.

What is previewed

The panel follows the canvas selection and shows exactly one node.
Nothing selected, or more than one node selected: “Select a node to preview its output”.
Selected node with no image yet: “<node name> has no rendered output yet”.
Nodes that do not render a texture of their own (reroutes, output nodes) follow their incoming connection upstream and show the first rendered output found. Only one incoming connection is followed, so on an output node with several channels wired you see one of them; select the upstream node to inspect a specific channel.
The panel automatically promotes the displayed texture to full resolution in the background and refreshes when the sharper version lands. It holds that full-resolution claim only while it is open and only for the node it is showing, so closing the panel stops the app paying for full-size pixels.

Header readout

Top-left shows the node’s name and the pixel size of the displayed image, e.g. “Node name - 1024×1024”. When the image was resolved from upstream, the size is the upstream texture’s.

Controls

3×3 repeats the texture in a seamless three-by-three grid so tiling seams are obvious across the joins. Off by default. Drawn edge-to-edge with no gutters, at the same crispness as the untiled view.
RGB / R / G / B / A is channel isolation. RGB (default) shows the image unmodified; the others copy that one channel into all three color channels and force alpha fully opaque, so a mask, a height map, or a packed channel reads as a solid grayscale image.

Pan and zoom

The image is fitted to the panel and pan/zoom applies on top of that fit. Scale ranges from 0.1× to 16×. Drag to pan; scroll (desktop) or pinch (touch) to zoom. Magnification uses no smoothing, so individual pixels stay sharp-edged for inspecting noise, dithering, and single-pixel artifacts.

Live updates and limits

The preview repaints whenever a render finishes or fails anywhere in the graph, and on any graph change. There is no manual refresh, no reset-view or fit button, no zoom readout and no pixel-value/color picker. Zoom, pan, tiling, and the isolated channel carry over when you select a different node, and none of them are saved with the project.

Nothing in this panel affects the graph or what is exported.

This panel shows one node’s flat output. To see a material’s channels wrapped around a model instead - unlit, exactly as authored - use the 3D preview’s map rows; see 3D Material Preview.