I have created a node group that has inside a value I’d like to set from outside but there is no socket in this setting. Several nodes haven’t always sockets to connect it (X/Y Blur, HueSatValue, sphere of the Normal, etc).
Is there a way to connect it anyway?
Maybe with driver’s expression but I didn’t succeed to do it.
If the node has no input socket you can’t do much. The only solution would be to use drivers, but…
There are workarounds for some scenarios.
Let me give a few:
Blur: Set blurriness inside group much higher than you need and use “Size” input.
A trick with angle of “Normal” node:
In Cycles it’s easier then in compositing, but in compositing it’s also possible.
Below you’ll see two setups in cycles that give exactly the same, the lower one can be used to “extract” normal node and plug angles to the input of the group.
… and here goes the setup in compositing. It’s a bit more complex, because we don’t have vector math node, so we have to calculate “dot product” manually:
Thank you Bartek for the normal node workaround. It was exactly something like that I was looking for! I will use it quite a lot with the position data.