Hi everyone my name is Garrett. Fist time posting on the forum. So...I have a small background in design and today I started thinking about the idea of CC being a node based software. Generally nodes can simplify complex workloads and allow for expanded API’s for communities to create tools with. I believe CC would definitely be a great choice for this approach. The idea is to have a TEXTURE or MORPH node, and combine with others blending values together. Effector nodes could be implemented to change the output appearance of a texture. Nodes could also be grouped as a DNA stack which can be saved a reused in later projects. Just to get the concept out I spent two hours figuring out what this would look like. ***DISCLAIMER*** I do understand some stuff doesn’t make sense, its just a rough idea. If the community has any ideas to add please share here. If Reallusion wants to give me a job I would gladly flush out this concept lol. Cheers 

If RL implements the node concept , I would be the first to leave Reallusion products.
I've been a user for 12 years because  their tools are the easiest to use. They don't use that abstruse concept of nodes.
As a producer the node-based tools slow the workflow. The nodes were created a long time ago to compensate for the lack of
power of the hardware wich had to manage UI/script too long to process.

Interesting...🤔 in my experience node based approaches are pretty simple but I do believe it’s hard for some to wrap they’re minds around it. Have you tired Houdini? Maya and blender are also flowing that approach now. Must be a reason why big companies have this offering. While I haven’t been a user of character creator 3 for 12 years, nor knew that it existed for that long lol. The UI of both CC and iclone are very cluttered and could be at least improved for functionality. Or... they could just let the software get more cluttered while it expands with ever growing content and plugins. Or they could just consolidate the plugins into nodes with a inspection stack. Also I would like to bring up the amount of space the current UI takes up. The more you see the character the better, that’s the art piece and easily viewable from any monitor size. Hopefully older users won’t be the ones holding back great technology from being expanded because of complacency. The technologies potential is great even if not node based. Maybe Reallusion has to please they’re older user base but the problem with that is nodbody was making feature films in North America in that group. Previz is cool but I have my sights set on realistic digital humans, stand based hair, dynamic wrinkles, cloth simulation.

RAG DOLL COLLISION ANIMATIONS FOR ICLONE 8 & 7
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Ghost Origins

My latest Feature length film created with Iclone.

My Sci- Fi Graphic Novel on Amazon: https://a.co/d/9k3cwoY

My IMDB listing
Anabran Abdhul Quarnain - IMDb

Understandable! I wouldn’t say nodes would be a replacement for artist tools but more of a extension of the manipulation of morphs and textures. I wouldn’t think this would need to be that deep of a workflow either. Like Unreal, it can be as deep as you want it to be. My proposal is simply a different way of visualizing a complete character (morphs & textures) within a sequence of nodes. I look at it like a DNA stand of what makes a human. Just a concept I’m still enjoying most of what I see from the community.

If you look at Skin Gen with its layered approach it would be hard to replicate that elegantly in a node-based system and still maintain some simplicity. I have seen the graphs needed in Blender to recreate the Skin Gen shader and it looks kind of messy.

With Creator Creator, I can create characters very quickly and they are good enough to appear in movies. I have actually had some success with mine in competitions and festivals last year.

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*Smart* nodes and texture handling can be more than just applying to it to skin, or such. I'd say it can come in one way or another as a plugin to virtualize things like smart texture tiling, randomising, which cannot be achieved with traditional UV tiling, nor substance. It should be like an option to enhance material under a single interface, scalable for future updates. So that we would not need a separate, stand alone shaders like SSS. And it should coexist with current, traditional method of creating and applying materials.