Adding & Arranging Nodes
There are two ways to browse the node catalog. Both use the same searchable card gallery, showing live GPU-rendered preview thumbnails for every node that has one.
The node picker
Section titled “The node picker”A transient modal sheet. Open it by double-clicking empty canvas or pressing Space. Tap a card to place the node. This is a plain catalog with no arrangement controls. There is no Add Node toolbar button: the toolbar’s search field finds nodes as well as manual articles. See Interface Tour.
The Node Library panel
Section titled “The Node Library panel”The library’s permanent home, and where you customize it:
- Search matches both the node label and its description, so “make it look worn” finds Curvature.
- A tag filter strip sits above the grid. Tags combine with AND. Only tags actually in use are offered.
- Favorites are a pinned section, always first. Right-click a card and choose Add to Favorites or Remove from Favorites. Favoriting does not move a node out of its category.
- Categories are the registry’s own categories (“Generators”, “Filters” and so on) plus any you create. They can be reordered by dragging, renamed for display, and collapsed. Custom categories hold an explicit list of nodes; a node placed in one is moved, not copied, so the library never shows the same node twice. Built-in categories cannot be deleted (that would strand their nodes) but can be reordered and renamed.
- A per-node right-click menu offers favorite, assign tags, and Move to another category.
- A Reset action restores the default arrangement.
- The footer button, Import .surfacenode…, brings in a shared node package. See Sharing nodes.
- Tap a card to place the node at the viewport center; drag a card onto the canvas to place it exactly where you drop it.
Three entries in the gallery are canvas furniture rather than real nodes and sit in a Canvas category:
- Reroute: a wiring pin that bends a wire without changing what flows through it. See Connections & Reroutes.
- Comment Box: see Comments & Annotations.
- Jump Node: a labeled navigation marker. It is a jump target for recentering the view from the Node Map panel and takes no part in texture evaluation.
None of the three can be tagged, favorited or recategorized: they are not registry definitions, so they carry no node id for those features to hang on. Deprecated node types stay loadable from old projects but are hidden from the gallery.
You can also insert a Reroute by double-clicking just off a wire on empty canvas.
The node context menu
Section titled “The node context menu”Right-click a node (desktop), two-finger tap it (touch), hold one finger on it for 400 ms, or hold the primary button or Pencil on it for 500 ms. Opening the menu on a node that is not already selected replaces the selection with just that node; opening it on a node that is selected leaves the whole selection intact and the menu applies to all of it. The menu header reads “1 node selected” or “N nodes selected”, and offers:
| Item | When it appears |
|---|---|
| Rename | Only when exactly one node is targeted and it has an editable label: a Jump Node, a comment box, or a subgraph instance (which renames the definition) |
| Duplicate | Always. Applies to the whole selection |
| Show Preview / Hide Preview | On a single selected node that came from the node registry |
| Collapse to Subgraph | When every node in the selection came from the node registry |
| Expand Subgraph | On a single subgraph instance |
| Visualize | On a single PBR Output that is not already the one the 3D preview shows |
| Export .surfacenode… | On a single selected node that came from the node registry |
| Insert Comment Box | Always. Places a comment box just below and right of the node you opened the menu on, selected and already in text editing |
| Delete | Always, styled as destructive. Applies to the whole selection |
A right-click on empty canvas does nothing, and neither does a two-finger tap. A one-finger hold on empty canvas starts a marquee instead. See Selection & Undo.