Shader View – A Smarter Way to Preview Your Nodes

Tired of endless switching nodes to the material output just to check their effect? Shader View simplifies your workflow by displaying real-time output previews directly above each node, making shader creation faster, efficient, and more intuitive.

Or pay in 4 installments on Gumroad 

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Navigating shader trees can be frustrating, especially with complex materials. Instead of manually switching nodes to the material output, Shader View provides instant previews for all nodes in your material.

• ✨ Optimized for performance – designed to handle large shader trees smoothly.
• ✨ Customizable settings – adjust each node preview independently to fit your workflow.
• ✨ Intelligent – prevents node previews overlap, keeping the node editor clean and organized.

Seamless & Fast – Even on Big Node Trees

Shader View is designed for optimal performance, even on low-end machines. It processes node output previews in the background process, ensuring smooth workflow and real-time updates. Instead of updating all nodes at once, the add-on chunks the node tree, allowing you to balance speed and performance to match your needs.

Tune Performance in Add-on Settings:

• Render Window – controls how many nodes are processed per batch.
• Update Threshold – adjusts tree update frequency (default: 0.1s, lower = faster, less lags; higher = less CPU usage).

Smooth and efficient even with node trees containing 200+ nodes.

Shader tree is processed horizontally (wide logic), meaning changes affect the all closest connected nodes first.

Enhanced Node Scalar Previews – Debug with Precision

Shader View Pro goes beyond just visual previews — it provides precise numerical insights into your node shader calculations. No more guesswork when dealing with clamped values or invisible data ranges!

Scalar Features (Pro Version Only):

🔹 Real Value Display – Unlike the standard preview, which may clamp values, ShaderView now shows the actual scalar values processed by each node. This is crucial for debugging shader logic, ensuring accuracy in procedural materials, and preventing unexpected behavior due to clamping.

🔹 Scalar Grid Preview – Understand how values distribute across your node output. Extra new color-coded grid visually distinguishes values:

• Red shades highlight areas above 1.0, making it easier to spot overexposed areas.
• Blue shades reveal negative values, which are always invisible in standard previews.
• Gradient transitions help analyze smooth value changes and detect issues in logic.

🔹 Min/Max Value Display – Instantly see the min/max of full range of values used in any node output. This is especially useful when working with height maps, bump maps, and displacement shaders, where precision is key.

🔹 Scalar Preview Modes for 3-Channel Sockets – When working with vector or color output sockets, you can now switch between different visualization modes:

• Lume Mode (Luminance): General vector preview.
• Vector Length Mode: Shows the magnitude of a vector, helpful for debugging displacement and normal adjustments.
• Normal Dot Mode: Calculates the dot product between the node output vector and geometry normal, essential for analyzing surface shading and normal-related effects.

Why This Matters

When working with procedural textures, displacement maps, or mathematical shaders, understanding the actual values behind the visuals is essential. Shader View Pro now will gives you full transparency over what each node is processing, allowing you to:

• ✔️ Debug shaders with precision by detecting unintended clamping or missing detail.
• ✔️ Improve procedural material accuracy by knowing the exact value distribution.
• ✔️ Quickly identify and adjust problematic areas in texture-based calculations.

New Features:

Shader View keeps evolving with new features to make working in the Shader Editor easier and smoother. Each update enhances your workflow, boosts performance, and adds powerful new tools.

(Pro Version Only): Easily switch between UDIM texture tiles using Alt + Shift + Left Double Click

(Pro Version Only): Vector Splitting – Enables separate previews for RGB/XYZ components instead of displaying the full vector. This provides clearer visualization by allowing each channel to be viewed independently.

Smart Preview – Keep Your Node Editor Clean and Organized

In Blender, post-process drawing (POST_PIXEL) is the only way to overlay custom visuals in the Shader Editor. This often leads to issues where previews overlap with other nodes, making the node tree messy and harder to navigate.

Shader View solves this by intelligently managing preview placement, preserving the original "z-order" of nodes while also masking previews to prevent them from overlapping other nodes. This keeps previews visible without obstructing node connections or UI elements, ensuring a cleaner and more structured node editor.

Turn OFF – Previews may overlap, causing clutter.

Turn ON – Previews are dynamically adjusted for better visibility.

This feature avaliable only for Pro version and can be disabled in the add-on settings to improve performance, allowing you to balance visual clarity with system efficiency based on your workflow needs.

Set It Up Your Own Way

For both the Standard and Pro versions.

Everyone’s workflow is different. Shader View gives you full control over how previews are displayed. With per-node customizable settings, you can adjust each preview independently, ensuring the add-on works exactly the way you need it to.

Customize the preview size for better visibility. Adjust the size globally in the add-on settings or fine-tune it individually for each node as needed.

Choose the output socket you want to preview; the selected socket will be highlighted.

You can zoom in or out of node previews to focus on details.The resolution dynamically updates to maintain the same level of detail as when not zoomed.

When zoomed in, use Alt + Shift + Hold Left Click to adjust the zoom focus (Pro version only).

Adjust preview resolution for clarity or performance.

Switch between Plane and Sphere for preview rendering.

Select the camera type to see how your shader looks in perspective or orthographic views.

Additionally, you can adjust the render sample count, switch between EEVEE and Cycles render engines, and toggle the lighting mode — especially useful when working with normal maps. All these settings can be customized independently for each node in your shader tree.

Key Features

• ✅ Real-Time Updates – edited nodes update instantly.
• ✅ Automatic Sync – update all connected nodes automatically.
• ✅ Background Process – render previews in the background to keep Blender’s interface and workflow smooth and responsive.
• ✅ Non-Destructive – makes no changes to your .blend file, so others can open it without this add-on.

Who Is This For?

Anyone Working with Shaders – if you use Blender's Node Editor, this add-on will make your life easier!

Stop wasting time flipping between nodes and material output — get Shader View today and speed up your workflow! 🚀

Important Notes:

• The add-on runs a background process for rendering previews, and by default, it uses EEVEE. However, on macOS, initializing an EEVEE environment requires launching a separate Blender instance, which causes the extra bouncing app icon. Since version 1.0.18, you can switch the default render engine to Cycles in the add-on settings (Pro version only). Choosing Cycles prevents the extra Blender window from appearing but may slow down preview rendering. To apply the changes, you will need to restart Blender.
• The add-on has a mechanism to restart the background process if it exceeds the time limit set in the settings (Pro version only). If you're using very complex materials, consider increasing the default Render Threshold from 3.0 to a higher value.
• Since the add-on release, many bugs have been fixed, but some may still be undiscovered. If you encounter any issues, feel free to contact me on Twitter or send a message on Blender Market, and I'll do my best to fix them as soon as possible.

Don’t miss a thing

👉 You can now join me on Discord! I’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes progress on upcoming add-ons, shader tricks, and exclusive promos — just for the community. Don’t miss out!

Last Update:

March 30

• Fixed file settings for the Standard version. Previously, the .zip file was missing after purchase — this has now been resolved.

Full changelog see at Documentation.