The Parameters panel & hotbar

Collect the controls you perform with into one panel, and bind the ones you touch constantly to the number keys.

As a graph grows, the controls you actually perform with end up scattered across dozens of nodes. The panel headed Pinned Parameters gathers them: pin any node or any single parameter to it, organise them into folders, search them, and edit several at once. The hotbar sits on top and gives key access to the handful you touch every second.

It is docked in the default layout, and it appears twice in the panel menu, as Parameters and as Pinned. Both tabs are views onto the same collected list, so neither of them follows the node you have selected.

Pinning controls

Two routes get something onto the panel. Right-click a node and choose Pin to Panel to pin the whole node: the panel shows the node's title bar in its family colour plus every visible parameter, so the whole node can be driven from here. Or Alt-drag a parameter's label out of a node and drop it onto the panel to pin that one control as a single row. The drag has to start on the label rather than the value, and it needs a few pixels of movement before it takes. A single-parameter pin suits live performance, where three or four sliders stay on screen and everything else stays in the graph.

Pins are grouped under a heading for where they live, either the Main graph or a subgraph if you pinned something from inside one. Click a heading to collapse or expand that group.

A node's output socket has its own separate right-click pin, Pin to Data Viewer, which parks that output's table in the Data Viewer rather than putting anything here. It is a different list with a different purpose: this panel is what you drive, the Data Viewer is what you read. See Pin to panel.

Searching and organising

A search box sits at the top of the panel. Typing filters the list to matching names as you go, and the ✕ clears it.

Folders keep larger setups readable:

• Click 📁+ in the bottom toolbar to create a folder.

• Right-click any pin and choose a → Folder name to move it in, or Remove from Folder to pull it back out.

• Folders collapse and expand like the group headings.

Pins can be dragged up and down to reorder, and any pin's label renamed (right-click, then Rename Label) so it reads the way you think about it rather than carrying the node's internal name. Right-clicking a pinned parameter also gives Copy Value and Paste Value, for cloning a setting between nodes, and Reset to Default.

Editing several at once

Click a pin to select it, Shift-click to add more, or drag a box across the panel to marquee-select a run of them. The bottom toolbar shows how many are selected.

With pins selected, Delete removes them in one go, from the toolbar button or the Delete and Backspace keys. Deselect clears the selection. Clear All empties the whole panel.

Removing a pin only takes it off this panel. It never deletes the node or changes its value, and the control still lives in the graph.

The hotbar: keys 1 to 0

The hotbar is a compact strip of numbered chips across the top of the panel. Each chip shows its number and the name of what it triggers. Press the matching number key, or click the chip, to fire it without hunting through the graph. There are ten slots: 1 through 9, then 0 for the tenth.

What a press does depends on what is pinned:

• A whole-node pin selects that node, which makes its viewport tool active. The chip lights up while that node is the current selection.

• A trigger parameter, such as a feedback reset, fires once. Nothing sticks and the selection does not change.

• Any other parameter steps its value up by one increment. Shift and the same digit steps it back down.

To put something on the hotbar, right-click its pin and choose Add to hotbar, which claims the lowest free number from 1 to 9. The tenth slot is never handed out automatically. For a specific key, choose Set hotbar key… and press the key to bind; the panel listens and binds it, with a banner confirming it is waiting. Remove from hotbar frees the slot again.

The hotbar is scope-aware. It shows only the slots belonging to wherever you currently are in the graph, so stepping into a subgraph shows that subgraph's bindings. The same key can mean different things in different places, and the strip always matches what the keys will do.

Auto-adding tools

Some nodes are interactive viewport tools, placed and dragged in the viewport. Adding one can claim a hotbar slot automatically so it is ready to use.

Open the ⚙ Auto-add tools to hotbar section at the bottom of the panel to see every tool node and tick which ones auto-claim a slot. A single tool can also be opted out from its right-click menu, with Stop auto-adding this tool.

See also

• Parameter widgets for the controls themselves.

• Pin to panel for pinning from the node graph.

• Viewport tools for the interactive tools the hotbar selects.

• Live performance for building a performance-ready layout.