📦 Bundle size

Full ESM build, minified and gzipped.

🌳 Bundle size after tree-shaking

Minimal build including a renderer, camera, empty scene, and dependencies.

Do you think we can move it to the Inspector as a new tab or extension?

A new tab could definitely use it yes, but I don't think the inspector should own the feature.

Or maybe the same logic as the checkbox options such as forceWebGL?

but I don't think the inspector should own the feature.

Hmm.. Why do you think that? The first impression I had was that it would be an inspection tool; a UI that would accompany any example, without needing to be recreated, would be useful.

Another thing I would suggest in this regard is, let’s say you add an option in the Console tab; when enabled, I think it’s preferable to do monkey patching on the RenderObjects.prototype.get prototype or interception through an abstraction interface so that we don’t need to add NodeMaterialDebug.js and other configurations to the core.

I’ve been adding, through the inspector, this monkey patching to prevent complex debugging code from becoming incompatible with tree-shaking, a technique similar to what the WebGL Dev Extension does.

Updated this to be inspector-owned now.

I initially explored a renderer-level before/after callback for node builds, but that felt too much like adding public
API for something that is really only inspection/debug tooling. The current version keeps the core signal small and
routes it through the existing inspector abstraction instead:

  renderer.inspector.beginNodeBuild( info );
  renderer.inspector.finishNodeBuild( info );

These are called from NodeManager.getForRender() only when a NodeBuilderState is actually missing and needs to be
built. The timing/info object is only created when an inspector exists, so normal rendering does not pay for this path.

So the console should now stay focused on messages like:

Renderer: NodeMaterial needs rebuild for "DebugPhysicalMaterial"
via material.colorNode.enabled (disabled -> enabled) [material.customProgramCacheKey] in 10.200 ms.

This also keeps the feature aligned with the earlier suggestion to make it an inspector tool rather than something each
example or renderer user has to wire manually.

/cc @sunag @Mugen87