Special Node Sockets (geonodes, shader, compositor) OBSOLETE in B3.6+

OBSOLETE in B3.6+

If you prefer a Python solution or want to reproduce these nodes yourself for free, check out my BSE answer.

Have you noticed some node fields (also geometry nodes panel) specify units like degrees°? Turns out, you can't set it up using the Numbers Panel socket editing interface, but you can create a socket like that, by using the feature of automatic socket creation: just drag your mouse from the "ghost" socket of the Group Input node, to the socket of your choice, and Blender will create a new socket, copying the settings of the connected socket.

Problem is, if you want to add the distance unit (m in case of the default settings for the metric system) to your socket, you can do it in a shader because you can use the Mapping node, but in Geometry nodes there is no node using distance units!

So I prepared 3 nodes, which gather all socket types unreachable from the Numbers Panel, each for different node tree type: compositing, shading, geometring:

Now you can just append the node to your project, and use it to create a socket of your choice.

🖤💜 create degree° sockets, which communicate clearly to the user the unit of the angle, and automatically converts the values to radians (no need to use Math: to radians node)

💚 use integer sockets in shaders and compositor, whenever you want a value to snap to whole numbers

💜 use vector fields with physical units of distance (e.g. m), velocity (e.g. m/s) and acceleration (e.g. m/s²)

🖤💚 create slider fields with an optional % sign (the value stored isn't divided by 100)

🖤 create a time field - sounds sci-fi, but it just displays the most appropriate unit of time, e.g. for 3600 value it will display "1h".

💜 have fun with "direction" vector field, which allow you to drag a sphere and therefore modify a normalized vector in an organic way.

👻 The Ghost Socket would crash Blender in geonodes, but for the other node trees it can symbolize some special purpose, e.g. for Python scripts.

⚠I promise no support and give no guarantee the item actually works❗ You’re buying junk! Treat it as an educational material rather than a product. However, I’d love to hear any kind of feedback: bug reports, suggestions, ‘backlinks’ to your work that uses the obtained junk (if you decide to share, please provide info if I can use it in the description of the item). Based on that I may tinker with an idea some more, but no promises are made.

Within the package:

✅ A sockets.blend file from which you can append a node to your project for easy special socket creation.