ControlNet Soft Weights 🛂🅐🅒🅝

If you ever used Auto1111's sd-webui-controlnet extension, you'll remember the "My prompt is more important" control mode - a way to keep ControlNet's structure guidance without letting it steamroll your prompt. SoftControlNetWeights is that exact behavior, ported to ComfyUI as a standalone weights node: instead of one flat strength applied to every ControlNet layer equally, it applies a per-layer curve that tapers off, giving the prompt more say the deeper into the network you go.

How it works

A standard SD1.5/SDXL-style ControlNet has thirteen internal blocks, and this node gives you one weight slider per block - weight_00 through weight_12. Left at the defaults, they form a soft ramp: roughly 0.10 → 0.12 → 0.15 → 0.18 → 0.21 → 0.26 → 0.32 → 0.38 → 0.46 → 0.56 → 0.68 → 0.83 → 1.0. That's the "soft" curve - light influence early, building to full strength only at the last block - which is what gives the prompt room to breathe rather than being overridden outright. Most people never touch the thirteen sliders individually; they exist for fine control, but the shipped default is the point of the node.

flip_weights reverses that curve - front-loaded instead of back-loaded - if you want the opposite emphasis. uncond_multiplier is the other half of the Auto1111 feature pair: it's what "ControlNet is more important" maps to. Set it to 0.0 and you get Auto1111's behavior exactly; anything between 0 and 1 gives you a granular version the original extension didn't offer.

The inputs and outputs that matter

• weight_00 – weight_12 - the thirteen per-block values (0–10 each, defaults form the soft decay curve above). Leave these alone unless you're deliberately hand-tuning the curve.
• flip_weights (default false) - inverts the curve direction.
• uncond_multiplier (optional, default 1.0) - 0.0 reproduces "ControlNet is more important" exactly; values between granularly dial it in.
• cn_extras (optional) - a side channel for architecture-specific extras, documented in the README for Anima LLLite's inpainting mask.

Outputs: CN_WEIGHTS feeds a Timestep Keyframe's cn_weights input (or Apply Advanced ControlNet's weights_override, which the README is explicit applies to every timestep regardless of any other schedule you've built - only use it if that's genuinely what you want). TK_SHORTCUT packages the same weights as a ready-made Timestep Keyframe, so you can skip building one separately if you don't need any of its other features.

How to install it

Through ComfyUI Manager: search "ComfyUI-Advanced-ControlNet", install, restart. Manually:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Kosinkadink/ComfyUI-Advanced-ControlNet

then restart ComfyUI. No model downloads and nothing heavy to install - it's a pure weighting node sitting on top of whatever ControlNet you've already loaded.

Common issues & troubleshooting

"weight types are compatible" error. This node is shaped for the standard 13-block SD1.5/SDXL ControlNet architecture. If you loaded a T2I-Adapter, this won't validate - swap to SoftT2IAdapterWeights instead, which matches that architecture's shallower structure.

No visible difference from a flat strength. The soft curve is a subtle effect, not a dramatic one - it's meant to rebalance prompt-vs-structure at the margins, not gut ControlNet's influence. If you want a stronger version of the same idea, push uncond_multiplier toward 0 rather than hand-editing the individual weight sliders.

Update issues via ComfyUI Manager. This pack has shown up in community reports where Manager claims "you're on the latest version" when a real update is available. If behavior doesn't match current docs, cd into the pack's folder inside custom_nodes and run git pull manually before assuming something's broken.