Lodestar is a plugin to streamline sharing, copying, and re-using complex node trees. Lodestar is essentially a translator- the Lodestar language turns node trees into plain, linear, text. The Lodestar plugin takes that plain text and converts it into nodes.
The advantage here is mainly ease and quality of life. Taking screenshots and sharing .blend files as a way to share nodes is just... the worst. It's time-consuming, memory consuming, and deeply inefficient. Thus, the Lodestar language is designed to be easy and quick to write; a shorthand, if you will.
In future, this plugin will allow you to select a node tree and automatically convert it into plain text (and then back again!!) but right now, it's still very much under construction. In other words, if you load this into Blender right now, it's not going to do much!
Features for stable launch:
- Two-way conversion
- Automatic connection
- Automatic re-arranging/offset
- User interface
Planned features for upcoming updates:
- Access the references from a server- no memory lost, and always 100$ up to date
- Comp nodes
- "Favorites"
- Period to the left: an input
- Period to the right: an output
- Forks are marked by pn(n = 0,1,2...)
- If not forked, an input will always go to the first listed attribute (if there are attributes)
- Two slashes separates nodes
- One slash separates attributes
- One dash defines attributes per node
- Two periods makes a straight path
- Nodes and attributes are shortened to four letters plus designation
- Nodes are designated noden (n = 0,1,2...)
- Attributes are designated attrn (n = 0,1,2...)
- Numerical input is designated with dashes on either side plus applicable periods
- Paths end with =
For example,
rgba0..diff0-color/p1.rough//..glos0-color/p1.rough//=itex0.p1=diff0.mixs0-slot1=glos0.mixs0-slot2=p1.mixs0-fac=mixs0.mato0-surface=
combines diffuse and glossy, sharing an RGB color, with an image texture as roughness and mix factor. It may look complicated, but it's honestly fairly intuitive to write with a little practice. All special characters have been chosen to avoid usage of the shift key, as well, making it even faster. (That assumes you have a numberpad for symbols such as +.)