Wrappers

Wrappers are the artist-facing nodes in Natsura.
They package together multiple low-level operations into a single, more usable tool with parameters, sockets, and defaults.

Think of wrappers as shortcuts: they provide a familiar cockpit for common workflows while still exposing hooks for mapping, effectors, and advanced control.

Why Wrappers?

• Reduce graph complexity — a single wrapper can replace several core nodes.
• Faster iteration — most defaults “just work” out of the box.
• Socket-based design — easy to plug in mappings, effectors, and decorations.
• Still flexible — wrappers can contain other wrappers, and advanced users can drop down to core nodes when needed.

Wrappers are designed for artists first, but they also serve as a bridge: technical artists can open them up, see how they’re built, and extend or customize them.

Common Wrappers

• Grow — the centerpiece; one growth step, optionally looped and forked.
• Repeat — repeat a graph fragment multiple times.
• Split — fork a graph into multiple children.
• Switch — choose between different branches of logic.
• Prune — remove or gate growth dynamically.
• Wrangle — inject custom attributes, gates, or effectors via VEX.

Wrappers vs Core Nodes

• Wrappers: artist-friendly, parameterized, socket-enabled.
• Core nodes: minimal verbs (grow_core, repeat_core, etc.), meant for building custom wrappers or debugging.
• Execution: Simulate runs everything, regardless of how it was authored.

Notes

• Wrappers can contain wrappers. For example, Grow includes repeat, split, and switch logic internally.
• You can mix wrappers and core nodes in the same graph.
• Some wrappers (like Grow 1.1) now consolidate multiple common actions to reduce cognitive load while keeping flexibility.