🗺️ Gimbal Grid Stitch

The unglamorous end of the Gimbal pipeline: GimbalGridStitch takes a batch of decoded images and arranges them into a single contact-sheet image so you can actually look at all of them at once. It's the natural finishing move for GimbalManifold_Explorer grids and GimbalCircularOrbit frame sequences - generate nine variations, stitch them into one 3×3 sheet, and survey the whole neighborhood in a single glance.

How it works

One input: images (a batch, [B, H, W, C] - whatever your VAEDecode produced). It works out a square grid with ceil(sqrt(n)) columns, pastes each image into its cell, and returns a single IMAGE. Nine images → 3×3, sixteen → 4×4, ten → 4×4 with empty cells. That's the entire API, which is worth knowing for one reason: the pack's README and wiki keep talking about a columns input (and a pad_value for empty-cell fill), but the shipped node doesn't have them. It's a square grid, always, no column control, no padding color. Don't go looking for a knob that isn't there.

When you'd reach for it

Whenever a batch of variations is more useful as a sheet than as a stack. The canonical chain: Manifold Explorer → KSampler → VAEDecode → Grid Stitch → Save. Grid cell order follows the batch order, so with a 3×3 Explorer grid you get the natural left-to-right, top-to-bottom arrangement that matches the explorer's coordinates - the README even maps cell 4 (center) to the neutral point. For orbit frames it's a nice way to review 12–36 views of a subject without scrubbing through a folder.

Installing

Standard pack install: ComfyUI Manager → search "Gimbal-comfy" → install → restart, or git clone https://github.com/FormAndNoise/Gimbal-comfy into ComfyUI/custom_nodes. Dependencies are torch/numpy/pillow, already bundled; nothing to download. (The README's clone URL is stale - FormAndNoise/Gimbal-comfy is live.)

Where people get burned

The main friction is expectations from the docs: if you've read the wiki and try to set columns = 3 on a 10-image batch, there's no such input, and you'll assume you've got a broken install. You don't - the shipped node just does the square-grid thing. Second, it stitches, it doesn't resize: all cells assume the same resolution, so feeding it mixed-size images (say, from different upscale paths) pastes them at their native sizes and your sheet comes out ragged. Keep the batch uniform. And it's pure IMAGE in / IMAGE out - no latent passthrough, no clever compositing. For what it is - a no-drama contact sheet - it works fine, and it's about the least pretentious node in a pack that's otherwise heavy on flight-deck theater.