ComfyUI Tutorial Series: Ep01 - Introduction and Installation

hello I'm starting a new series of tutorials on stable diffusion AI using the comfy UI interface every day I'm learning more about it and uh I'll share the things I've learned with you you

know I'll explain it from a graphic designer's perspective in a way that's easy to understand so anyone can use it I'll structure it into episodes allowing you to watch in a certain order and

progress from beginner to Advanced in this first episode I'll discuss what comfy UI is and its advantages and disadvantages then we'll quickly go

through the installation process download different models so by the end of this video you'll be able to generate your first image for free using your own computer when it comes to stable

diffusion there are multiple interfaces to choose from each with its own characteristics some are easier to use While others are more complex or faster

popular interfaces include automatic 1111 Forge UI invoke and today's Focus comfy UI comfy UI is a user interface framework

that lets you create and manage workflows by visually connecting different tasks um much like building with Lego blocks each block or node

represents a specific function and by connecting them you can easily construct complex processes advantages of using comfy UI comfy UI lets you create

workflows quickly and flexibly without being limited by preset options each node shows a specific function making it easy to see the entire process you can

easily share your workflows um and use ones made by others promoting collaboration comfy UI requires no coding just drag and drop nodes to create and customize workflows for your

needs downsides of using comfy UI the organization of nodes and comfy UI can vary between workflows um which can be confusing when using other people's setups the detailed view of processes

might overwhelm uh average users who prefer simpl despite no coding requirements there is a learning curve to effectively use nodes and build workflows complex

workflows can affect performance um slowing down your computer if it doesn't meet system requirements despite these downsides comfy UI remains a strong and versatile tool uh for creating and

managing workflows especially for users who need detailed control once you have your workflow set up it is fast and efficient initially I avoided comfy UI because it seemed too complex with all

the nodes but after spending a few days with some tutorials I started to appreciate its capabilities so let's start with the

installation um you can visit the GitHub page for comy UI in the feature section you'll find everything it can do such as stable diffusion video stable audio and

other supported features there's also a list of shortcuts um available finally you'll find the installation instructions I have Windows operating

system and an Nvidia RTX 4090 card so I'll demonstrate the installation for Windows and Nvidia if you have a different operating system or graphics card you can find installation

instructions below for those systems for system requirements you'll need a recent operating system and the more vram your video card has the faster it will

generate especially if it's from the RTX series therefore Nvidia cards are preferred for for their speed I tested it on a 6 GB vram video card and it

worked okay but not very quickly so I would recommend opting for an Nvidia card with at least 8 gigabyte of vram or more and ensure you have 16 gigabyte of ram in your system for a smoother

workflow for Windows it's quite straightforward you just need to click on the direct download link for the portable version and choose a folder where you want to store it I'll choose

to put it on my D drive and create a folder named comfy UI the archive is in 7z format and you can extract it using szip you can find a download link here

or in my case I have WinRAR and we'll use that to extract it now let's navigate into that newly extracted folder you'll notice it indicates that

it's portable inside you'll find several dobat files and a readme file that you should read the readme file explains which dobat file you need to run

depending on what you want to do for Optimal Performance use Nvidia GPU because it's much faster than the CPU and the redmi file also includes additional information such as where to

place the models and other relevant details double click on the Run Nvidia GPU dobat file and a command window will open and this will launch the comfy UI you can view here details about your

graphics card including how much vam and RAM you have once it finishes a new browser window will automatically open display playing The Comfy UI interface

you can use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out or you can use shortcuts like alt plus and ALT minus you can move the canvas around by clicking on it and dragging or you can press the space bar

uh and move the cursor you can also click on nodes and drag them around arrange the interface so that it fits your screen comfortably those little rectangular windows are called nodes in

comfy UI you connect these nodes to load models input text create images and save your work in a step-by-step process the lines between nodes show how information moves between them

connecting each part of your work together the Q prompt button in comfy UI adds your current image generation task to a list allowing multiple tasks to run

one after another automatically um if I click on it it should generate an image uh but instead I get an error first of all when you encounter an error it's helpful to look at which nodes the error

occurred in um you can see that the load checkpoint node has a red outline and the message says value is not in the list which means it couldn't find that specific checkpoint with that name on

our computer if I click on that list and try to select a model um you'll notice I can't find one because I haven't downloaded any checkpoints for this to work therefore we need a stable

diffusion model there in order for it to work properly the easiest way to get models is to visit the civit AI website there you'll find a tab labeled model click on it to see various types of

models what I like to do is sort them by highest rating or most downloads you can also use filters to select a specific time period like a week or a month for

file format I prefer safe tensor because it's safer than the ckpt format uh the most popular models are typically v1.5

sdxl and recently sd3 I will select an sdxl model which is the one I usually use let's go to the search and look for

Juggernaut models here we have a few options this one is the sdxl version and this one is the v1.5 version I'll choose

the XL version and you can see there are different versions available such as um the hyper version however I prefer version X because in my opinion it offers better quality let's download

this model by clicking on the download button with the down arrow icon after that you need to place it in a specific folder navigate to The Comfy UI folder then locate the models directory inside

there's a folder named checkpoints where you store all your stable diffusion models um regardless of the version click save and wait for the download to

complete since it's quite large around 6 GB it will take some time to finish downloading let's download an SD v1.5 model as well suitable for those with

less powerful video cards to generate images faster at lower sizes you can go to the filters and select only v1.5 models or you can search for Juggernaut

again and choose the v1.5 version the latest version is called reborn so you can download that one before downloading make sure to check for um the base model

label to ensure it's the correct base model for example if it says v1.5 it's crucial to use the same base model across all your models this is

important because features like control net will only work with you know the same base model type for v1.5 models you'll need v1.5 control net and related

extensions while sdxl models will require corresponding sdxl components and extensions for now it's important to understand that the base model exists and what type it is I'll talk more about

it in future episodes so don't stress to much click download and place it in the same U checkpoints folder as the previous model if you check other models

you'll notice that each one specifies its base model often with different versions from various dates generally newer versions have undergone more training and provide better quality so

you'll likely prefer the latest version if I quickly navigate to comfy UI then go to models and checkpoints you'll see that the download isn't finished yet

it's still in progress if I skip ahead a few minutes both models the reborn and X versions are now here and ready the installation of comfy UI isn't complicated at all you simply download

comfy and the model and you're done I could have made a two-minute video showing just that however I prefer to explain each step in detail so you have a better understanding of what's

happening this way you'll be able to do more than just clicking generate and getting an image you'll understand how to use it effectively if you try to load the newly downloaded model and nothing

happens it's likely because the comfy UI was already open and when we downloaded the model in this case you need to click on refresh and now you should see the

models appear in the list both the reborn and X versions should be visible now I'll select the sdxl version I will resize the node to see the model name better you can only adjust it from uh

the bottom right corner after resizing you can then move the node into place now if I try to generate again using the Q prompt you'll notice that we have a green outline around this checkpoint

note um but that's not all you can follow the flow to the next node and see that it's also green if each node turns green all the way to the end it means

the image was successfully generated however if any nodes turn red there's a problem that needs to be addressed and for this prompt here is the result now I'll choose the other model the reborn

version to see if it works I'll click on Q prompt as you can see the flow moves quickly from one node to the next you'll notice in the command window that it generated in just a few seconds the

first time may take longer um because it's also loading the new model um if I generate again you'll see it only took one second for a 5 on 12 pixel image in

the next episode I'll provide more detailed explanations of what each node does but for now here's the short version this workflow uh loads the model

using the uh load checkpoint node it encodes the positive prompt where we describe what we want like a glass bottle and the negative prompt with words you want to avoid like Watermark

using two clip text and code prompt nodes these encoded prompts are then fed into the case sampler node which adjusts

parameters such as seed steps and CFG to generate a latent image based on these inputs the latent image is decoded using the vae decode node and the final step

involves saving the generated image with the save image node each model performs best with specific settings and many models come with recommended

configurations if we return to the model page and scroll down um clicking on show more reveals all the details here you'll find information such as recommended

image size number of steps and other relevant settings these details help optimize the performance of each model according to its

specifications as you can see here it indicates 512x 768 pixels for the image width and

height the v1.5 base models were trained on images sized 512 by 512 pixels you can go slightly larger up to 768 pixels

but exceeding this might cause the model to interpret the image as 2 512 pixel images resulting in double heads and various distortions so we can create

Square landscape and portrait images as long as they are closed to those values let's try the portrait orientation look for the empty latent

image node and here you can enter the width and height I will use 768 for the height and press okay let's see what

else we have here it mentions um sampler DPM plus plus 2m caras so we'll look for sampler in the list we can find it here

although it doesn't have two plus signs but it has two PS so it's essentially the same but with a different name however we don't have Caris in the name

instead Caris is placed under um Schuler in uh in the next field so where it says schedular normal um we replace normal

with Caris um it also mentions steps 35 and cfg7 so we'll add those values as well since we're testing things out let's also try their example if I look

where the images are um and click on the I button I can see the prompts and settings used to generate that image I can copy the

positive prompt and paste it into my positive prompt field and do the same for the negative prompt you'll notice the settings are the same only the seat

is fixed but I'll leave mine random when I cue The Prompt I get this beautiful portrait image not bad for a v1.5 model uh let me try a few more Times Yes

it seems to be working just fine now that we've configured all the settings and everything is working well we don't want to set up these configurations every time instead we can save the

entire workflow so we can return to it later or you know share it with others click on Save and save it in a location

where you can easily find it again I recommend creating a workflows folder somewhere on your drive for organization uh give it a descriptive name so you

know what it's all about and and there you have it you've created um your working v1.5 um workflow for this specific model

let's go to the sdxl model page for the Juggernaut version XR 10 and uh click on show more here we have recommended settings for both the normal version and

the hyper version since we downloaded the normal version we'll use the settings for that one now let's load

that sdxl model into our comfy UI interface I prefer the sdxl model over v1.5 because now I can create 1024px

images if you enter values for width and height around that number it should work fine the sampler steps and CFG settings um are similar to the other Juggernaut

model so I'll leave those the same I'll copy the positive and negative prompts from one of the examples to see what we can get since the image width

and height are larger it will take longer to generate however the image quality is better in my opinion so now we have a working

workflow for sdxl as well we can save this workflow to preserve all the settings for later I'll give it a name that I'll remember now that the workflow is saved we can clear the current

workflow using the clear button using the load button we can load other workflows for example I can load the um reborn version if I want or I can click

load again to get the sdxl version workflow everything works fine now as you can see I can test it quickly and it works great let me show you where the

generated images are saved you can navigate to The Comfy UI folder then into uh the output folder here you'll find all the images that have been

generated um another cool feature is that these images embed the workflow information so if you drag an image into the comfy UI interface it will load the

workflow used to generate that image for example um this image was uh generated with reborn and it contains

the uh positive and negative prompts as well as the settings if I drag another image you'll see that the settings are different for that

image if we want to close comfy UI we can simply close the command window uh you'll notice in the interface it says reconnecting but if you refresh nothing will be

there let me show you another thing uh first I'll delete the zip archive we use to um extract comfy UI to save some space then to make it easier for us to

start comfy UI without navigating to the folder uh we can create a shortcut for it right click on the Run Nvidia GPU bat file then go to send to and choose

desktop this will create a shortcut on the desktop for it now if we go to the desktop we can give it a better name like comfy UI right click on it and

select properties then click on change icon click okay and you can select an icon from there such as a star perhaps click okay and then

apply um let's see if it works double click on it and yes it's loading the command window and now we have the last interface we used so now we can clear the workflow and create one

from scratch I'll show you how to do that in the next episode you can load the default workflow um but for now let's load the

sdxl workflow and test it with a cute cartoon house the house looks cute if you want to do more such as loading other people's workflows or

installing custom nodes you'll need a manager for that called comfy UI manager and you can find it on the GitHub page page and I highly recommend getting it

just follow these instructions to install it navigate to The Comfy UI folder then go to custom nodes in the address bar type acmd and press enter

this will open a command window next copy the text from step two and paste it into the command window then uh press enter this action um will uh clone or

copy the custom node uh which we refer to as the manager into your folder wait for the process to finish then you can close the command window to restart

comfy UI close the command window and reopen um The Comfy UI interface the first time you do this it will perform some initial setup tasks such as installing the necessary components for

the manager to function which are called dependencies because it relies on them and now you will notice in the bottom right corner you have a button called

manager if you click on it you can see it has more options and buttons from here you can update everything or just the comfy UI for example if I click on

it you can see in the command window that it is checking for updates uh when it's done you'll see a successful update message in the

interface also next time you need to restart just go to manager and hit restart instead of closing the command

window and trying to reopen it it will handle everything for you and open a new tab with a fresh interface one useful feature is that if you install a

workflow from someone else that includes custom nodes not on your computer you can click on install missing nodes here you'll see all the missing node names listed uh with the option to install

them on the right in the next episode I'll demonstrate how to build a workflow from scratch and understand its components I'll explain what each node means how to add them move them connect

them and more if you find this helpful please leave a like thank you for watching [Music]