Instead of generally hiding all unused sockets in collapsed mode, the sockets now have a new explicit flag SOCK_AUTO_HIDDEN, which is only toggled when the hide_toggle operator is called. This way the auto-hidden sockets stay as they are when nodes are duplicated etc. The new flag is necessary to distinguish between manually hidden sockets (via hide_sockets_toggle operator) and automatically hidden sockets and restore the node state when unhiding a node.
The hiding code uses the SOCK_IN_USE flags already present. These were only temporarily set by the shader node code for determining needed texture coordinate types. Now they are used persistently and updated along with the sock->link pointers.
Now, compositing, shading and texture nodes have a consistent muting system, with default behaving as previous (for compo), and which can be optionaly customized by each node.
Shader nodes are also GLSL muted.
However, Cycles is currently unaware of muted nodes, will try to address this…
effect for a render engine using new shading nodes. In short:
* No longer uses images assigned to faces in the uv layer, rather the active
image texture node is what is edited/painted/drawn.
* Textured draw type now shows the active image texture node, with solid
lighting.
* Material draw mode shows GLSL shader of a simplified material node tree,
using solid lighting.
* Textures for modifiers, brushes, etc, are now available from a dropdown in
the texture tab in the properties editor. These do not use new shading nodes
yet.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Render/TextureWorkflow
This branch adds mostly organizational improvements to the node system by renaming the node folders and files. A couple of internal features have been added too.
Detailed information can be found on the wiki page:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Phonybone/Particles2010
