LoadFile

LoadFile is a ten-line utility node tucked inside the RealisDance-ComfyUI pack, and its whole job is to give the main RealisDanceNode a file path. It lists every file sitting in your ComfyUI input folder and returns the absolute path of whichever one you pick. That's it. It doesn't read the file, decode it, or care what it is - it hands over a PATH string and moves on.

You need it because the three driving inputs on RealisDanceNode (dwpose_path, hamer_path, smpl_path) are plain file paths, not images or videos. Your pose file is a .pkl, which LoadImage won't touch, and ComfyUI's built-in loaders won't hand you a path either. LoadFile exists to fill exactly that gap: drag it in, pick the file from its dropdown, wire the PATH output to one of RealisDanceNode's path inputs. If you're loading the .mp4 driving videos instead, the same pack's LoadVideo node does the equivalent for video files.

The one input

• file: a dropdown of every file in ComfyUI/input, sorted alphabetically. There's no browse button and no upload dialog on the node itself - put your files there (or upload through any file uploader that writes to the input folder) and they'll appear after a refresh.

Output is a single PATH - the absolute path to the chosen file. That's the whole contract, and it's the only thing that matters about this node.

Installing

It ships in the same pack as RealisDanceNode, so there's nothing separate to grab - Manager can install "RealisDance-ComfyUI", or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/AIFSH/RealisDance-ComfyUI

Restart ComfyUI and you'll have it. Note it drags in the pack's whole heavy dependency list and the ~15 GB first-run model downloads when you first instantiate the dance node - LoadFile itself is featherweight and won't trigger any of that on its own.

Gotchas

A couple of small traps. First, the node only lists files already in ComfyUI/input - a .pkl you dragged onto the canvas won't show up unless it lands in that folder. Second, the source is unapologetically copy-pasted: the method that "loads" your file is literally named load_srt, a leftover from the author's subtitle-handling packs, and there are sibling nodes in the pack with the DESCRIPTION "hello world!". It still works - it just reads exactly as low-effort as it is, and that's fine for a path picker.

If you're here from the RealisDanceNode page: use LoadFile for the .pkl, LoadVideo for the .mp4 driving videos, and don't expect the pack to ever change - it's been dormant since September 2024.