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Material

Material in ComfyTV

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What this node does

Material is a small material-authoring studio. You edit a live physically-based (PBR) material on a rotating preview sphere — pick a base color, drag sliders for metalness, roughness, transmission and more, or start from a preset like Polished metal or Clear glass. The sphere re-renders instantly as you tweak, and a snapshot of it is auto-captured as an image output. Everything happens browser-side and updates live; there is no ▶ Run needed just to author a material. The exception is the image input: if you connect a reference image, running the node sends it to a VLM (vision) workflow that estimates PBR parameters from the photo and merges them into your material — a quick way to match a real surface. The node produces two outputs: a COMFYTV_MATERIAL you can bind to model parts elsewhere, and a COMFYTV_IMAGE snapshot of the ball for previews and thumbnails.

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When to use it

  • Author a reusable PBR material (chrome, frosted glass, matte rubber, glazed ceramic) to bind onto an imported model’s parts.
  • Quickly estimate a material from a reference photo via a VLM workflow, then hand-tune it.
  • Build a small library of look presets to keep surfaces consistent across a project.
  • Produce a clean material-ball thumbnail for documentation or comparison.

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The editor

The node is a stacked panel, top to bottom: Preview sphere. A live WebGL material ball fills the top of the node. It re-renders on every change; shortly after you stop editing, a snapshot is captured and uploaded as the image output automatically (no button to press). Preset row. A row of one-click chips that load a full look. The built-in presets are:
  • Glossy plastic — low roughness with a clearcoat.
  • Matte plastic — high roughness, no coat.
  • Polished metal — full metalness, near-mirror roughness.
  • Brushed metal — full metalness, medium roughness.
  • Clear glass — very low roughness, full transmission.
  • Frosted glass — mid roughness, full transmission.
  • Rubber — very high roughness.
  • Ceramic — glazed clearcoat over a smooth base.
Clicking a preset overwrites the numeric sliders (metalness, roughness, transmission, opacity, clearcoat, IOR, etc.) but leaves your chosen color alone. Color. A color swatch plus a hex text field set the base albedo of the material. Sliders. Six live sliders, each with a numeric readout:
  • metalness — 0–1. How metallic the surface reads (0 = dielectric/plastic, 1 = metal).
  • roughness — 0–1. Microsurface roughness; low is mirror-sharp, high is diffuse.
  • transmission — 0–1. See-through refraction; raise it for glass and liquids.
  • opacity — 0–1. Overall alpha of the surface.
  • clearcoat — 0–1. A glossy lacquer layer on top (car paint, ceramic glaze).
  • ior — 1–2.333. Index of refraction, driving how strongly transmission bends light (≈1.5 for glass).
The material model also carries clearcoatRoughness, emissive color and emissiveIntensity; these are part of the stored material and are set by presets and the VLM estimate, though the panel’s direct controls are the color plus the six sliders above.

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Workflow / step by step

  1. Add a Project node, then Add Node → ComfyTV → Input → Material.
  2. Click a preset chip (e.g. Polished metal) to get in the ballpark.
  3. Set the color swatch to your base tint.
  4. Fine-tune with the roughness, metalness, clearcoat and other sliders while watching the sphere.
  5. The snapshot uploads on its own — the image output updates a moment after you stop dragging.
  6. Wire material into a model/part-binding node to apply the look; use image as a thumbnail.
Estimate from a photo: connect a reference to the image input, pick a workflow (the material-estimate VLM), and Run. The model reads PBR values off the photo and merges them into the current material; keep tuning from there.

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Inputs and outputs

The live material and the captured snapshot are stored internally and driven by the editor, not by exposed widgets. COMFYTV_* outputs are project references, not native ComfyUI tensors. To use the snapshot with native nodes, add a Bridge — see the bridges guide.

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Tips

  • You don’t need to Run just to author a material — sliders and the snapshot update live. Run is only for the image-input VLM estimate.
  • Presets overwrite the sliders but preserve your color, so pick a preset first, then set the color.
  • For believable glass, pair high transmission with low roughness and an ior near 1.5; frosted glass is the same but with mid roughness.
  • clearcoat sits on top of the base — great for car paint and ceramic glaze without changing the underlying metalness/roughness.
  • The snapshot is captured a short moment after your last edit, so let the sphere settle before wiring the image downstream.
  • Model Loader / part-material binding — apply the COMFYTV_MATERIAL onto a model’s parts.
  • 3D Scene — stage and shoot the model the material is applied to.
  • Image Stage — a reference photo source for the VLM estimate.
  • Bridge → / ← ComfyTV Image — convert the snapshot to/from native ComfyUI tensors.