Fast Patching

Once you have mastered the basics of Wire and have integrated it into your vj or content creation workflow you might want to take a look at how you can speed up your workflow.

This article is a summary of all features that make patching Wire faster.

Drag Duplicating Nodes

Nodes can be duplicated by holding down the ALT button and dragging a copy from the selected node(s). All parameters and attributes of those nodes will be duplicated too.

Create From Inlet/Outlet

Nodes can be created from inlets and outlets.

Click on an inlet or outlet and a cord will appear.

Next, click on the canvas and the node search box will pop up.

Search for the node you want to create and Wire will create that node and make the connection.

Note that the search box will be filtered to exclude nodes that cannot be connected to the inlet/outlet you are creating from.

Chaining nodes

Expanding on the previous system, when using ⌘/CTRL + Enter to create the node, you have the option to chain multiple nodes together.

For example: it is possible to chain Texture In into Transform into Colorize into Bright.Contrast into Texture Out to create a skeleton for your entire patch.

Auto-Layout

Selecting nodes and hitting the shortcut ⌘/CTRL + L will perform an Auto-Layout on those nodes. During the Auto-Layout operation Wire will attempt to sort and align the nodes as neatly as possible.

This can quickly turn an unorganised patch into a readable project.

Note that feedback loops tend to act a bit strange during the Auto-Layout because they do not adhere to the Left-To-Right rule that Wire is built upon.

Insert Node

To quickly insert a node in an existing connection between two other nodes, simply double click on the cord that connects them and the node search box will pop up. As with creating from an inlet/outlet, the results will be filtered to only show possible connections.

Insert Join

Instead of manually creating and connecting a Join node you can select the nodes you want to join and use the shortcut ⌘/CTRL + J to join them.

Do note that the output types of the nodes should be the same.

For example: you cannot join a Textrure2Drgba with a Float.

Insert Pack

The Insert Pack shortcut (⌘/CTRL + P) can be used to quickly combine two, three or four nodes that output the Float type into a Float2, Float3 or Float4 type.

Expose as Input

By right clicking on an inlet you get the option to "Expose as Input".

This will create an input node with the correct name and range.

For example: Exposing modifier inlet of the Fractal Noise node will create a Int Int node with three option counts with the correct values and names.

Wrap in Comment

Nodes can be wrapped in a comment node by selecting them and using the shortcut ⌘/CTRL + M. This will create a hollow comment node around the selected nodes. This feature can be used to quickly separate your patch into sections. If there are no nodes selected Wire will create a comment node instead.

Select Unused Nodes

If you are reading this article, you will probably know that the shortcut ⌘/CTRL + A selects all nodes. But did you know that the shortcut SHIFT + ⌘/CTRL + A will select all unused nodes in your patch?

Unused nodes are all nodes (excluding comments) that do not lead/contribute to a final output.

This shortcut is used to quickly clean up big patches before saving and/or exporting.

Input Box Math

Are you still grabbing your calculator to calculate divisions of your resolution? Please stop doing that. The input boxes in Wire support simple math operations like additions, subtraction, multiplications and divisions.

These operations can be done in node input boxes, in the node panel and in the dashboard panel. Note that there is a whole range of expressions you can do in both Wire and Arena!

Editing Multi-Component Values

By holding down the shift key while dragging a multi-component value box(for example: a Float2/Float3/Float4 box) you can increase/decrease them all at the same time.

Additionally, when entering a value in a multi-component value box, you can hit shift+enter to apply the value to all components at the same time.