Idea- Created Custom Shape "Freeze" Option

Ok I had an idea recently while in the midst of practicing filter design.

Certainly we all know that the more complex and detailed our result is intended to be it can
often create a monster of a filter that takes a great deal of time to render, relatively.

Now I know that some portions of a filter must always have the consecutive flow of their
requisite modules to be present and in order to achieve the desired result. However it appears
that in other cases it is only the image of a particular sub result that is necessary to be
present for it to fulfill its role as a step in the process.

Say for example that you created a wheel with spokes that you then will apply other effects to
in designing either a car wheel or a round handle of some kind.
Now this wheel is dependent on a number of modules to exist, however it is only the image of the wheel that will be necessary for the ongoing completion of the entire filter.
Lets say that our wheel is a black and white image composed of gradients, offset and blends.
What if instead of needing to retain all those prior modules to retain your wheel, what if we
could somehow "Freeze" the image of the wheel to be saved and used as a "temporary" or
"custom" module type?

Then that wheel image would only be one module which I would hope would save on processing
time and rendering. So I create my wheel shape "freeze" it and save that in my Custom Shape
Module Panel. Now if any of the other effects required similar types of created images
that would otherwise would require a number of modules themselves, and if those sub results
only depended on that particular created image to proceed with the filter creation then
quite a number of modules present in the filter would be decreased. Also this would preserve
the "Image" module from having to be used in this way.

The only drawback that I would see from this method is that when a person opened a filter
they would not be able to see how those shapes were created. But if for filters that were
submitted to the library that utilized these custom shapes, they would then need to have also
been submitted to the custom shapes snippets library for example. Then a user could refer to
that area to learn how that part was done.

I think that if these options existed we could make some much faster yet very awesome filters.

Please comment and discuss!

It sounds analogous to saving custom shapes or brushes in Photoshop. I'm afraid that is a bit against the grain of basic FF philosophy, for the "modules" would have to be turned into rasterized images instead of being mathematically described and thus would no longer be resolution independent.

I think I answered my own question on the last post, yes using image input does determine size of output.

Which brings up a different point, it would be nice say if I am creating a texture that is
1200 x 1200 and I want my 600 px image to influence only a certain part of the filter and not determine the final dimensions, I think that would be a cool thing also. Possibly some kind of ticked option.

Returning to my initial suggestion I suppose that the limits you mention on resolution independence makes that idea too unweildy or unworkable. In terms of final result it is no different than using an image from a result in place of a filter component except that currently we must render our image at the correct size we would want to have when we reuse it
as a component.

I would guess that the easiest way to implement this would be if we were able to use multiple
distinct images in our filter.
And it would be awesome if we could have the option of say checking a box to indicate
whether the use of that image determined our final output dimensions.

As I continue to think about this I still think this might be possible although I am not sure how to describe it accurately. Ideas of being able to create a custom savable component come to mind.

Ok I just did a search in FF help and could not find the term "module" I think I saw someone
use that term in the forums. So I think I may have misused some words in my description.

I was using the term "component" as a multipart section of a filter and the term "module" as the term for a single filter part, which is actually a "component".

Editable components would be interesting.

Quote
Kraellin wrote: interesting idea to output to only a portion of an external image.

That is not what I am suggesting,as you know many of the existing filters use shapes that we make using various gradients and blends and offsets etc. that effect the structure of our filters final output.


You can see from this image an example of what I am talking about. These are clearly not external images but they are in a pure sense "images" we create within the filter construction
to effect the final outcome of the result. Those components in the red circle happen to be blends, my initial idea was to somehow encapsulate that component in that state that could then
be saved and retrievable to use as output only which in my hypothetical version would eliminate
the need for the presence of the preceding components.

Regarding the image idea on a separate track depending on where it is plugged in it can effect the entire structure of the output without even being able to see the actual image.
In other words the image component can have a number of influences on parts of filters that
are desirable and which do not or may not depending on use require that the final output dimensions be the same as the external image used.