Because that’s what bezier curves do.
Nah he means that groups of pins don’t line up between two different nodes that share the same pins. It annoys me too, but that’d require quite a redesign to fix. For example you could make it so node vertical growth and input pin location is dynamic so that they line up, but that’d considerably change how nodes present themselves.
I did some photoshop. This is how I think it could work. Nearby attached nodes would:
- influence their child pins
- rearrange connected pins to the top in order of parent node vertical placement
- grow the node vertically to automatically align
- move unconnected pins to the bottom or to the first appropriate space
The vertical alignment feature would be optional per-node, in the same way comments are optional. It would default to off.
I’ve edited the last two nodes here to demonstrate the option turned on:
I don’t actually think that this would be all that hard to do. You guys wanna have a group effort and figure a pull request out together?
Uh, no, definitely not creating more space between pins, that just looks ugly and is hard too read.
( That is, to me… it could be an option, more choice eh)
To line them up with other nodes, you can align with reroute nodes.( who’s pin should als be on the grid), ie, i have no problem with bezier curves, but for lines that are almost straight, but just a bit off, that is irritating, like the ‘set target velocity’ node you have in your screenshot.
But better drawing, that could be default right :
Just need to think a bit more ahead of what types of data need to be able to connect, and use the largest one. i guess that would be a dropdown, color or vector input, havn’t checked.
That, and the height is also determined by the node design itself. so a header can have two lines of text, make it uniform. Why a get node has output in the middle, same for math nodes ? etc…
Get those two aspects down and you will end up with a given height that fits everything, this is the minimum grid size. Align all pins on this. so nodes getting wider will do so in pin distance steps.
Also, nodes getting wider can get wider on the side where no pin is, for nodes with only in or out. And for ather nodes, there could even be a system where the node remembers the alignment you used, and get wider to the other side.
I’ll make some mockups when i find some time.
If something like this is implemented, the old code needs to be kept around, and an option given to activate the new layout on older graphs, manualy per graph, since this would mess up existing layouts. Maybe that is why Epic isn’t touching it
Oh, and sometimes, being able to flip pins on a branch for example would be handy too
In a nutshell, better more beautifull drawing, without bugs, and more options on nodes. It’s visual after all.
Also, why nodes change proportion in zoom levels? sure you don’t need to see all information on a node, but it doesn’t have to wobble and change all the time eh
It’s even so that if you explicitly align nodes (using the keyboard shortcuts) they get out of alignment depending on the zoom level.
Oh, and sorry for hijacking the thread, didn’t meant to… should have started a new feature request.
Fix the wobbly lines !