(Down)Load DynamiCrafter CNModel

This is the loader for DynamiCrafter's control model - the piece that lets you steer the animation with sketches instead of leaving it entirely to the model's imagination. It's the same "(Down)Load" convenience pattern as the rest of Kijai's loaders: pick the model from the dropdown and it downloads the file for you the first time.

It's part of kijai's ComfyUI-DynamiCrafterWrapper, the ComfyUI port of the CUHK / Tencent AI Lab DynamiCrafter and ToonCrafter models. This particular node exists for the sketch-guidance path, which is a nice-to-have on top of the core interpolation workflow rather than something every user needs.

How it works

Where a normal ComfyUI ControlNet reads a depth map or an edge map to constrain a still image, this control model - a sketch encoder - constrains the generated video frames toward sketch guidance you provide. It's the mechanism behind ToonCrafter's "reference-based sketch colorization" trick: give it rough sketch frames and it nudges the interpolation to follow them. This node just loads the encoder; the actual application happens downstream in DynamiCrafterControlnetApply. First run pulls the file into your models folder, then it's cached.

The inputs and outputs that matter

There's a single input:

• model - the dropdown, which offers sketch_encoder-fp16.safetensors. That's the sketch control encoder, in fp16. One meaningful choice, so this node is close to zero-config.

The output is DynCraft_CN_model (type DC_CN_MODEL). It doesn't do anything on its own - it feeds DynamiCrafterControlnetApply, where you combine it with your control images and a strength value to produce the DC_CONTROL that plugs into ToonCrafterInterpolation's optional controlnet input. So the chain is: this node → DynamiCrafterControlnetApply → the interpolation sampler.

Installing it

Bundled with the pack. ComfyUI Manager → search ComfyUI-DynamiCrafterWrapper, or cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes && git clone https://github.com/kijai/ComfyUI-DynamiCrafterWrapper, then pip install -r requirements.txt and restart. The control model downloads on first use - nothing to place by hand. (If you'd rather manage the file yourself, DynamiCrafterCNLoader loads a control checkpoint from your own checkpoints folder instead.)

Common issues

• The control model alone does nothing. It's just a loaded encoder. You need DynamiCrafterControlnetApply after it, plus an interpolation node that accepts the resulting DC_CONTROL. Loading it without wiring the rest is a no-op.
• Sketch control is optional and niche. Most DynamiCrafter/ToonCrafter workflows never touch this. If you just want image-to-video or plain cartoon interpolation, you don't need this node at all - skip it until you specifically want sketch guidance.
• First-run pause. It's downloading the encoder; watch the console.