Graph Editor : UX Updates Towards "Keyboardless" Workflow by kwokcb · Pull Request #3043 · AcademySoftwareFoundation/MaterialX

kwokcb · 2026-08-19T14:37:27Z

Updates

Update #3037.
Fixes #3032.

Add "Add node" : RMB on background
Add "hamburger" control : RMB brings up context senstive menu.
- Adds in rename (1) and delete node.
- Others can easily add more items for menu equivalents or new functionality.
Changes pan to MMB to avoid mouse conflicts and maps properly for 2-button mice / pen / touch.
- LMB usage for select / placement / connection workflow is unchanged. (2)
Fix so that focus (F) does not occur when using CTRL-F (search)

Notes:

(1) Rename is in-menu to avoid constant renaming causing "flashing" in UI and slow re-render on every keystroke.
(2) the remapping of pan should make it more consistent with DCCs / Web based editors and can handle 2-button mice / touch interfaces.

Implementation

Some refactoring for code reuse as much as possible for shared actions between keyboard vs mouse actions.

Results

New "hamburger" control

Rename node in context

Add node (via RMB)

- RMB add node - RMB on hamburger in node -> popup menu. Add only delete for now Fix: CTRL-F search without also trigger focus (F).

Add "rename" to menu.

- Bypass imgui node editor F key invocation which is always triggered regardless of modifiers. This is the main source of the bug.

- Disable hamburger on read-only nodes and disallow rename / delete on any read-only graphs.

- Extract out node width computation utility for us bye hamburger as well as previous pin placement.

…ed up pin layouts.

Disable RMB add popup on readonly graphs

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:37:56Z

 const float BASE_UI_FONT_SIZE = 18.0f;
 const float BASE_PIN_ICON_SIZE = 18.0f;
 const float MIN_PIN_ICON_SIZE = 18.0f;
+const float HDR_TEXT_INDENT = 4.0f;


Global header indent

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:39:00Z

    _layoutPending(false),
    _needsNavigation(false),
    _delete(false),
+    _nodeMenuToOpen(-1),


Track node menu popup and deletion info if delete chosen

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:40:08Z


+void Graph::drawNodeMenu(UiNodePtr node)
+{
+    const float buttonSize = computeHamburgerSize();


Node menu icon : "hamburger"

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:41:01Z

+
+float Graph::computeNodeContentWidth(UiNodePtr node)
+{
+    // Compute the node's content width (widest of the title row, shown


Utilitly to compute max text width for node

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:41:57Z

                    ImColor(ImColor(85, 85, 85, 255)), 0.f);
                ImGui::Indent(hdrTextIndent);
-                ImGui::Text("%s", node->getName().c_str());
+                ImGui::TextUnformatted(node->getName().c_str());


Extend title with node menu icon.

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:47:26Z

        addPinPopup();
        readOnlyPopup();
-        ImGui::PopStyleVar();
+        _nodeMenuRects.clear();


Fully clear state.

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:48:21Z

-                                _popup = true;
-                            }
-                        }
+                        deleteNodeById(id);


Uses common delete node logic.

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:50:18Z

+    // this frame and restore them immediately after.
+    if ((io2.KeyCtrl || io2.KeySuper) && ImGui::IsKeyPressed(ImGuiKey_F))
+    {
+        ed::EnableShortcuts(false);


This was very tricky to fix since you need to superscede the imgui node editor logic which always assumes F key (regardless of modifier) is pressed. Reulsint in CMD/CTRL-F always kicking off "focus on node" logic.

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:58:16Z


    // Options
    bool _saveNodePositions;
+    std::vector<ImVec4> _nodeMenuRects;


Used to track node menu location (hamburger) for hover hilighting

kwokcb · 2026-08-21T02:58:45Z

    // Create editor config and context.
    ed::Config config;
    config.SettingsFile = nullptr;
+    config.DragButtonIndex = 0;


Set mapping of mouse buttons.

kwokcb · 2026-09-13T02:16:53Z

@lfl-eholthouser, @jstone-lucasfilm : if you have some time could you take a look at this PR. It addresses a few issues but naturally not all but maybe useful to allow building on further for upcoming dev days. Thanks.

jstone-lucasfilm · 2026-09-13T20:24:41Z

Thanks for this proposal, @kwokcb! The rename consolidation and the Ctrl+F fix both look like clear improvements, and I'd be glad to see them merged soon. The new renameNode corrects the downstream update logic for node renames, committing on Enter rather than every keystroke is the right call, and disabling editor shortcuts around ed::End matches the pattern in the ImGui Node Editor widgets example.

On the mouse remap, I'd suggest we reconsider before merging. The PR moves panning to the middle button to avoid a conflict with a right-click menu, but ImGui Node Editor already resolves that conflict for us: its ContextMenuAction distinguishes a right-click from a right-drag, which is why the default config places both navigate and context menu on button 1. The blueprints example demonstrates the intended pattern with ed::ShowBackgroundContextMenu and ed::ShowNodeContextMenu. Building on that API rather than polling IsMouseReleased(1) would keep right-drag as pan, open the node menu on a right-click anywhere on the node, and remove the need for _nodeMenuRects and its hover tracking. It would also address a few potential issues in your current proposal:

Right-clicking a node body, pin, or link opens the Add Node popup, since only the hamburger rectangle is excluded.
A right-drag that ends on the background opens the Add Node popup as well.
Panning becomes unavailable on trackpads and two-button mice, which works against the goal of a keyboardless workflow.

If the hamburger feature is included in the current PR, I'd expect it to respond to a left click, matching the convention for that control.

The MacOS scaling change in Main.cpp seems separable from this work, and I'd suggest we take it up in its own PR with before-and-after screenshots. With our current ImGui version, skipping the content scale means fonts are rasterized at 1x and upscaled by the framebuffer scale, so this trades doubled text for blurred text on Retina displays. The usual approach for ImGui 1.88 is to rasterize at the scaled size and set FontGlobalScale to the inverse.

A few smaller notes:

documents/DeveloperGuide/GraphEditor.md still lists right-click as pan, and should follow whatever binding we settle on.
Moving addNodePopup after node creation leaves the search, add-pin, and read-only popups without the window padding style they previously shared.
The pin offset fix for the pins-on-border option is a good improvement, and worth a mention in the PR description.

Given the above, one option would be to split the rename and Ctrl+F work into a PR we can merge right away, with the context menu work following on the editor's native API.

Does that approach sound good to you?

kwokcb added 9 commits August 16, 2026 20:44

Keyboardless graph editor (start)

1e25736

- RMB add node - RMB on hamburger in node -> popup menu. Add only delete for now Fix: CTRL-F search without also trigger focus (F).

Cleanup hamburger drawing

0bfd202

Add "rename" to menu.

- Fix rename logic which actually does not work in the property editor.

fda60c7

- Bypass imgui node editor F key invocation which is always triggered regardless of modifiers. This is the main source of the bug.

Take hamburger width into account for output pin placement.

eff17f3

- Consolidate renameNode() to new corrected logic in renameNode().

5cba4ea

- Disable hamburger on read-only nodes and disallow rename / delete on any read-only graphs.

Fix hamburger placement to be right aligned.

ea7ea58

- Extract out node width computation utility for us bye hamburger as well as previous pin placement.

Fix up to handle unexpected imgui side-effects for layouts which mess…

21b81c0

…ed up pin layouts.

Make hamburger have fixed alignment.

7d7e9fd

Disable RMB add popup on readonly graphs

Comment cleanup.

d3980d9

kwokcb commented Aug 21, 2026

View reviewed changes

kwokcb added 2 commits September 4, 2026 19:58

Merge branch 'main' into keyboardless_graph_editor

b2f7df6

Merge branch 'main' into keyboardless_graph_editor

a3b96f3

kwokcb mentioned this pull request Sep 13, 2026

MaterialX Graph Editor Keyboard-less UX #3037

Open

Fix double UI scale on Retina (Mac).

6befba4

jstone-lucasfilm mentioned this pull request Sep 13, 2026

Ctrl+F triggers framing of the node graph in MaterialX Graph Editor #3032

Open

Navigation Menu

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Graph Editor : UX Updates Towards "Keyboardless" Workflow - #3043

Graph Editor : UX Updates Towards "Keyboardless" Workflow#3043
kwokcb wants to merge 12 commits into
AcademySoftwareFoundation:mainfrom
kwokcb:keyboardless_graph_editor

kwokcb commented Aug 19, 2026 •

edited

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kwokcb commented Aug 19, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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kwokcb commented Sep 13, 2026

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kwokcb commented Aug 19, 2026 •

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