📷ID Base Model Loader locally

The local counterpart to ID Base Model Loader from hub - same job, different source. If you already have an SDXL checkpoint sitting in your checkpoints folder (maybe a finetune you like better than the pack's default hub pick), this is how you build InstantID's pipeline off it instead of downloading a fresh one.

How it works

Same deal as the hub version: this isn't a plain checkpoint loader, it's assembling an InstantID-specific pipeline. It loads your local SDXL checkpoint, then bakes in the IdentityNet controlnet you feed it, and hands back a combined pipe object ready for the InstantID adapter to attach to next.

The inputs and outputs that matter

ckpt_name is a dropdown populated from your local models/checkpoints folder - same list you'd see on a standard CheckpointLoaderSimple. The README is explicit about the constraint that matters most here: it needs an SDXL-family model. Point it at an SD 1.5 checkpoint and the pipeline won't work - InstantID and IdentityNet were both built and trained against SDXL specifically, so this isn't a "should work, might be worse" situation, it's a hard architecture requirement.

controlnet takes the MODEL-typed output from ID ControlNet Loader - required, not optional, since IdentityNet gets baked into the pipe at this stage rather than applied later as a separate step.

Output is pipe, typed MODEL, which feeds into Ipadapter_instantid Loader next.

Installing it

Ships with the rest of the pack: search ComfyUI Manager for ComfyUI-InstantID, or cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes && git clone https://github.com/ZHO-ZHO-ZHO/ComfyUI-InstantID.git, cd in, pip install -r requirements.txt, restart. This particular node doesn't download anything itself - it just needs an SDXL checkpoint already sitting in your standard ComfyUI checkpoints folder.

Common issues

ckpt_name dropdown is empty or missing your checkpoint. This reads from the same folder every other checkpoint loader in ComfyUI does - if your model isn't showing up, it's a ComfyUI model-path config issue, not something specific to this node. Restart ComfyUI after adding a new checkpoint file if it's not appearing.

Picked an SD 1.5 model by mistake. This is the single most common way to break this specific node. SDXL and SD 1.5 checkpoints often sit in the same folder and don't announce their architecture in the filename - if your InstantID run produces garbage or errors deep in the pipeline, check this first before touching anything else in the graph.

No controlnet wired in. Required, not optional. If you haven't set up ID ControlNet Loader with IdentityNet's downloaded weights yet, this node has nothing valid to attach.

Wondering whether to use this or the hub loader. If you already have a local SDXL checkpoint you like and trust, use this one - it's faster (no download) and gives you control over exactly which finetune you're running InstantID on. If you're starting from nothing, the hub loader's default (wangqixun/YamerMIX_v8, one of InstantID's own authors' recommended checkpoints) is a reasonable place to start instead.