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Preview

I'm following another answered question on stackexchange and one of the screencaptures demonstrated the node editor with texture previews on individual nodes including output. This is from a much older version of Blender so I don't know if this feature was removed or is just disabled somewhere in the settings. How do I enable it back if it's just disabled?

UPDATE: It would also really help if I could get newer example of this tutorial as it's very outdated Smooth transition between two materials.

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    $\begingroup$ It's a paid-for addon available here. $\endgroup$
    – John Eason
    Sep 12, 2021 at 11:31

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Previews like that are a feature in the Texture node editor and the Compositor, but not the Shader Editor.

enter image description here

Using the Texture Node Editor for this task is honestly not very ideal, easiest way to achieve a smooth gradient between materials would be somehow like this:

enter image description here

You could use the Node wrangler add-on to view a single shader on your object, by Ctrl+Shift+Left clicking on them. Alternatively, there's a paid add-on called Node Preview which gives a similar type of preview to the Texture Node Editor and Compositor.

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    $\begingroup$ Note that the preview feature is expected to be in 3.0 $\endgroup$
    – Marty Fouts
    Sep 12, 2021 at 17:36
  • $\begingroup$ That's really nice, I didn't know that. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – Geri
    Sep 12, 2021 at 17:57
  • $\begingroup$ warning that paid addon relies on external libraries to work, and as far as I've heard, does not work at all under Windows 10 or 11 since the MSVC runtimes' libraries are not the same versions as what the addon expects (possibly work around by manually getting the libraries and putting them in, but that was just way too much work imo for a feature that should exist in blender). ...still wonder why devs make us go out of our way to figure out what the texture at that point should look like and assume we can just wing it :( :( :( $\endgroup$
    – osirisgothra
    Jan 19, 2022 at 18:31

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