Quote - Sorry about the links -  the linkifier if screwing up for some reason C&P :-)

http:/www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_10_modules/?page=advancedgraph

Now here is the main problem IMO. If a system requires a guru to create anything beyond the basics then it really cripple the potential of an application at this level. Where would computers be today if all coding had to be done with assembly language or even C/C++? That's still preferable for a few things but look at what the semi-literate user can accomplish with macros if Office or Python. The gulf is pretty much always filled by functionality between MS Paint and Photoshop, Movie Maker and Avid etc.

Frankly, I don't know what the technical challenges are. Can you have a generic 'Liquid' material and then adjust color, thickness (viscosity), coagulation(?), suspended particles etc. and create anything from clotted blood to oil to skim milk? Again, I don't necessarily need the oil to match Quaker State 10w40 in a mass spec, just credible oil. Is that a preset - yes. Is it the same as a skim milk preset that requires me to adjust some arcane (to me) math to get buttermilk - no, not when I can intuitively bump up the thickness and add some yellow particles for butter and have something reasonable.

Keep the advanced stuff, let the gurus create and produce loaves and fishes for the masses. Some of the masses do want to fish for themselves as well though. I really don't buy the notion that you can't even catch a carp without first reading up on the evolution of the bony fishes and then oceanography and of course marine engineering, cause you're gonna need a bigger boat. I can use other applications (as poorly as I use Poser) - I've never believed that Poser should be the be all, end all. At the same time though somethign more alonhg the lines of Vue, or Carrara or C4D or even the argh, pre-MentalRay Max editor would enable/encourage more people to get more out of the program IMO.

That is what the presets are for. Click on a prop and click on a material - and bingo, you have a generic oil//water/whatever material on the prop.

Loads of presets materials are available - both freebies and from the market place. Physically correct and simple easy to modify ones.

If you are a normal user, you use those presets. If you are an advanced user, you modify the presets and if you are an expert, you create those presets.

I really don't see the problem

But a macro facility loading a set of connected nodes without disturbing the existing node set would indeed be very nice