DynamiCrafter ModelLoader

This is the manual counterpart to the auto-download loader. Same job - hand a DynamiCrafter or ToonCrafter checkpoint down the graph as a DCMODEL - but instead of pulling from a fixed dropdown of Kijai's hosted files, it lists whatever checkpoints you've actually dropped into ComfyUI/models/checkpoints. If you already downloaded the file, converted your own, or want to run a checkpoint that isn't on the auto-download menu, this is the node you reach for.

It's part of kijai's ComfyUI-DynamiCrafterWrapper, the pack that wraps the DynamiCrafter image-to-video model and its cartoon-focused ToonCrafter cousin (both out of CUHK / Tencent AI Lab) into ComfyUI nodes. Kijai's the community's go-to for exactly this kind of research-repo-to-node wrapping, and most of his packs ship both a "DownloadAndLoad" node for convenience and a plain "Loader" node for people who'd rather own their files. This is the second kind.

How it works

Nothing exotic. The node scans your checkpoints folder, and the ckpt_name dropdown lists what it finds. You pick one, set precision, and it loads the model into the wrapper's runtime, emitting a DCMODEL handle. The catch worth knowing up front: the original DynamiCrafter and ToonCrafter releases ship as .ckpt files that must be renamed to the names the wrapper expects - dynamicrafter_1024_v1.ckpt, dynamicrafter_512_interp_v1.ckpt, and so on. Kijai spells the exact names out in the pack README. Drop a raw model.ckpt in there without renaming and the loader won't know what it's looking at.

The inputs and outputs that matter

• ckpt_name - the dropdown of files in your checkpoints folder. If it's empty, you haven't put a checkpoint there yet (or ComfyUI hasn't rescanned - restart). This is the whole point of the node, so get the filename right.
• fp8_unet - run the UNet in fp8 to save 1-2GB of VRAM. Cheap win on a small card, minor quality hit.
• dtype - fp32/fp16/bf16/auto. Leave it on auto unless you're chasing a specific precision issue.

Output is DynCraft_model (DCMODEL), the same handle the download loader produces, and it feeds the same downstream nodes: DynamiCrafterI2V, ToonCrafterInterpolation, DynamiCrafterBatchInterpolation, ToonCrafterDecode, DynamiCrafterLoadInitNoise. The two loaders are interchangeable from the graph's point of view - pick based on where your file lives, not on what comes after.

Installing it

Comes 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. Install xformers too (pip install xformers --no-deps) - the README is blunt that memory use without it is rough. Then download a checkpoint (Kijai's pruned bf16 safetensors repo on HuggingFace is the easy source) into ComfyUI/models/checkpoints before you expect this dropdown to have anything in it.

Common issues

• Empty dropdown. No checkpoint in ComfyUI/models/checkpoints, or ComfyUI hasn't picked up a newly-added file. Add the file and restart.
• Loads but produces garbage. Usually the wrong checkpoint for the downstream node - a ToonCrafter file feeding an I2V sampler, or the non-interp model in an interpolation graph. Or an original .ckpt that wasn't renamed to the wrapper's expected name.
• Not sure which file you need? If you don't already have a strong reason to manage files by hand, DownloadAndLoadDynamiCrafterModel removes the naming and sourcing problem entirely - use that instead and come back here only when you have a checkpoint the auto-list doesn't offer.