RenderFormer Example Scene

When you've just installed a pack that's this experimental, your first question isn't "how do I make art" - it's "does this even run?" RenderFormerExampleScene is the fastest possible answer: it loads one of the official RenderFormer example scenes and hands you a ready-to-render SCENE. No mesh loading, no camera setup, no lighting rig. Wire its output to the Sampler and find out. It's one of the 15 nodes in paulh4x/ComfyUI_PHRenderFormerWrapper, the "100% vibecoded" wrapper around Microsoft's RenderFormer (SIGGRAPH 2025).

How it works

The node reads the example .json scene files bundled with the official RenderFormer repo - which, remember, has to be cloned into the pack directory as renderformer during install - and runs the same conversion the official convert_scene.py does, but fully in memory. It parses the scene config with dacite, then patches trimesh's load/export and the HDF5 writer so every intermediate mesh stays in a virtual filesystem instead of touching disk. It's essentially the reference RenderFormer pipeline, wrapped for the graph.

The input

Just one: scene_file - a dropdown populated from the .json files in the cloned renderformer/examples/ directory (things like the bunny-in-a-box cbox-bunny.json scenes the model was demonstrated with). Pick one, and out comes a SCENE output.

That SCENE goes straight into the RenderFormerGenerator's scene input. Add a Model Loader and a Save Image, and you've got a complete, minimal workflow:

RenderFormerModelLoader ──MODEL──▶ RenderFormerGenerator ──IMAGE──▶ Save Image
RenderFormerExampleScene ──SCENE──▶ RenderFormerGenerator

Why it's in the Test category

The category says it all: this node exists to verify the pipeline, not to be the backbone of your workflow. It's the "hello world" of the pack - perfect for confirming your install is complete (model downloads, dependencies resolve, the renderer actually runs) before you invest time in your own scene. It's also a great reference: if your hand-built scene renders wrong, load an example and compare - you've now isolated whether the problem is your scene or the pack.

Installing it

# ComfyUI Manager: search "ComfyUI_PHRenderFormerWrapper"
cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes/
git clone https://github.com/paulh4x/ComfyUI_PHRenderFormerWrapper.git
cd ComfyUI_PHRenderFormerWrapper
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/renderformer.git renderformer
pip install -r requirements.txt
python -c "import imageio; imageio.plugins.freeimage.download()"

Restart ComfyUI. This node specifically depends on that renderformer clone - if the dropdown is empty, the clone is missing or misnamed.

Common issues

Empty scene_file dropdown - the renderformer/examples/ directory isn't there. cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes/ComfyUI_PHRenderFormerWrapper && git clone https://github.com/microsoft/renderformer.git renderformer, restart, done.
Errors about dacite or missing keys - the examples and the pack version can drift; the examples are matched to the format the pack expects, so update the pack if you see MissingValueErrors.
Slow first run - the model still has to download via the Model Loader on first render. That's the download, not this node.

It's a test harness, and unapologetically so - but the day you install this pack, it's the node that saves you an hour of debugging.