Panda3dTextureMerge

Panda3dTextureMerge is a two-into-one utility in the chaojie/ComfyUI-Panda3d pack: it takes two Panda3dTexture outputs and hands you a single textures output containing both. Alone it does nothing visible. Wired into Panda3dTest, it's the reason the demo's carousel lights actually blink.

How it works

The implementation is short and - refreshingly, given this pack's track record - actually correct. It checks whether each input is already a list; if not, it wraps it in one, then concatenates:

if type(texture1) is not list:
    texture1 = [texture1]
if type(texture2) is not list:
    texture2 = [texture2]
return (texture1 + texture2,)

That list-guard is the whole trick, and it's the exact thing its model counterpart (Panda3dModelMerge) skips. The result is a list of textures, which is precisely the shape Panda3dTest expects at its textures input.

Then the test node does the fun part. Its animation JSON supports a "texture" key that indexes into that list per frame. The demo workflow loads carousel_lights_on.jpg and carousel_lights_off.jpg with two Panda3dLoadTexture nodes, merges them here, and animates {"texture": [0, 1, 0, 1]} so the light rings flicker on and off as the carousel spins. That's a genuinely neat capability for a pack this small: swapping materials on a model mid-render, frame by frame, from inside the node graph.

The inputs

• texture1 (Panda3dTexture) - from a Panda3dLoadTexture output.
• texture2 (Panda3dTexture) - same.

Output is textures (Panda3dTexture), which feeds Panda3dTest's textures input.

Installing it

Standard for the pack:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/chaojie/ComfyUI-Panda3d
cd ComfyUI-Panda3d
pip install -r requirements.txt

Or ComfyUI Manager, search ComfyUI-Panda3d, then restart. The two demo light textures ship in the repo's models/ folder - no downloads.

Notes and gotchas

• It only matters if the renderer uses it. A merged texture list floating in the graph does nothing. The whole point is the texture key in Panda3dTest's animation JSON.
• Order is preserved. texture1 stays index 0, texture2 stays index 1 - which is what makes the [0, 1, 0, 1] pattern work. Wire them in the order you want to reference them.
• The index must exist. Ask the test node for texture[3] with only two merged textures and the animation just won't apply for that frame. No error, no highlight - silent no-op.

Of the two merge nodes in this pack, this is the one with an actual job, and it does it. Small, correct, and demonstrably useful.