Put Node Groups into Premade Categories

Question

So I was making node groups the other day, and had a thought... "Hey, could I put these into one of blender's premade categories?" I searched far and wide, climbed mountains, ventured across multiple landscapes, but found no answer. So what I want to do, is put these node groups into the default blender categories, or possibly make my own category. I do not want to go into "Group" every time. How can I do this?

Answer 1

The simplest way to do it is using a python script.

---

First thing to do is to changing your node group name to have a '.' at the start, i.e: myXptoNodeGroup >> .myXptoNodeGroup. This way, the nodegroup will no longer appear in the "Group" menu.

The second thing to do is editing the following script by adding your nodegroup(s) to the items list of the ShaderNodeCategory instead of '.myXptoNodeGroup', and run the script:

import bpy
from nodeitems_utils import register_node_categories, unregister_node_categories, NodeItem
from nodeitems_builtins import ShaderNodeCategory

node_categories = [
    ShaderNodeCategory('SOMENODES', "Some Nodes", items=[
        NodeItem('ShaderNodeGroup', "myXptoNodeGroup", {"node_tree": "bpy.data.node_groups['.myXptoNodeGroup']"} ),
    ]),
]

def register():
    register_node_categories('MYGROUPNODES', node_categories)


def unregister():
    unregister_node_categories('MYGROUPNODES')


if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Of course, this is not exclusive to ShaderNodeGroups, it's just a matter to change the corresponding NodeCategory, and the NodeGroup type for the NodeItem.