Cycles: How do I add an input socket to a node in cycles?

Question

I would like to add an input socket to the offset field on the image sequence node in cycles. Can this be done without using open shading language?

You can't create a socket, but you can certainly create a driver for the values: hover over the value, right click on it and select add driver (or Ctrl+D and control it in the graph editor. https://i.stack.imgur.com/hTylI.gif — , Nov 28 '17 at 04:52
like cegaton said drivers, but it is worth adding drivers on nodes might not update reliably: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5357/is-there-a-caveat-to-using-drivers-on-node-properties — Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny, Nov 28 '17 at 12:15
I had tried using a driver to the value field on the math node but it did not update well. It would take keyboard input to the value field, but if I plugged anything into the math node input socket it does not update. I even set up an animation node that can change the value of the math node, but it does still does not update in the material. My animation node skills are not that great though.... Thanks for all the input! — Talmore, Nov 29 '17 at 04:42

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '17 at 04:42

No, those node inputs represent hooks within the code that gets executed by Cycles itself. Not even OSL is enough in this case, you'd need to modify the source code of Cycles itself to allow frame number to accept arbitrary shader input instead of a fixed value.

Cycles: How do I add an input socket to a node in cycles?

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