⭐ Star Ref Mod Option

The gap this fills

MiniMax H3's whole pitch is reference-to-video, and the pack that made those references tunable is ComfyUI-MiniMaxH3Mod. Its RefMods decide whether H3 copies your reference's identity, its style, or just a vague resemblance - retention, a per-frame weighting curve, ref scrambling, a token budget. The stock way to use them is Load H3 RefMods → Apply H3 RefMod, which returns conditioning you then feed onward.

Except ⭐ Star Minimax All In One builds its conditioning inside the node. There's no positive-conditioning socket on it to run Apply H3 RefMod through, so anyone who moved to the all-in-one quietly lost access to their RefMods.

⭐ Star Ref Mod Option is the bridge. It takes the same H3_REF_MODS bundle and, instead of emitting conditioning, emits a settings bundle the all-in-one folds into its internal conditioning - appended after the native reference blocks, and carried into the latent-upscale refine pass so your settings survive pass two.

How it works

It doesn't reimplement anything. At runtime the node finds the loaded ComfyUI-MiniMaxH3Mod module and calls that pack's own functions - the same reference-block builder, graph-preset loader and debug-grid renderer - and reads the curve dropdown lists from that pack's constants when they're available. Resolution order is widget curve → graph preset → the mod's saved config, precisely what Apply H3 RefMod does. Which means the one hard requirement is real: ComfyUI-MiniMaxH3Mod must be installed. Without it the node raises a RuntimeError naming the pack. The dropdowns still populate from built-in fallback lists so the UI looks sane, but it will not run.

The inputs that matter

mods is the H3_REF_MODS bundle from Load H3 RefMods, Load H3 RefMod Axis or Extract H3 RefMod. Everything else is a knob.

retention - master reference strength, multiplied with each loader row's own strength. The MiniMax levels are worth memorising: 1.0 fully preserved, 0.7 partially preserved, 0.4 attribute transfer (style and attributes, not identity), 0.15 weak reference, 0 no reference. Beginners crank this to 1.0 expecting a photocopy and get a stiff, over-constrained render. For "same vibe, new subject", 0.4 is the number.

curve_direction, curve_shape, curve_value - the weighting envelope across the mod's own ref frames. Read the tooltip on curve_direction before you touch it, because it kills the most common misconception: the curve decides which reference content dominates, not where the concept appears in the output video. Ref tokens aren't bound to output time; for timing over the denoise trajectory there's a separate H3 RefMod Step Curve node in the dependency pack. Note too that constant is the current default, and the old default (concept_at_end) faded early stack frames toward blur, roughly halving average strength on multi-frame mods - so a saved workflow's sticky old value may be quietly costing you reference strength.

scramble_seed - -1 is off, refs in saved order. With two or more refs in the bundle, a seed of 0 or above shuffles the order and keeps a random subset, so a different reference leads each run. Set this widget's control-after-generate to randomize if that's what you want per run; leaving it on fixed with a chosen seed is how you make a good result repeatable.

graph_preset / save_preset_as - curves are shareable as a PNG with the graph embedded in its metadata, stored in models/refmods/graph_presets/. Type a name and run to save one; new presets only appear in the dropdown after a restart.

max_total_tokens - a budget on reference tokens after copies, 0 disables it. When you're stacking several refs into a long clip, context is the cost you're actually paying.

override - off by default, so your widgets win. Turn it on and the node uses the config frozen into the mods themselves (the one Fix H3 RefMod Config writes) - the honest way to share mods whose settings took real tuning. With no saved config in the bundle it falls back to your widgets and prints a note in the console instead of failing.

Two outputs. ref_mod_settings goes to the ref_mod_settings input of ⭐ Star Minimax All In One. curve graph is a 1024×1024 render of the envelope with the concept zone shaded - wire it to a Preview Image node and you can see the curve you're about to apply, which beats guessing what bump and elastic actually do from their names. Leave it unconnected and it isn't shown.

Installing

Both packs, and this is the one place the order matters. StarNodes first:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Starnodes2024/ComfyUI_StarNodes
cd ComfyUI_StarNodes && pip install -r requirements.txt

Then ComfyUI-MiniMaxH3Mod - StarNodes only names it, so install that one through ComfyUI Manager (search MiniMaxH3Mod) so you get its dependencies too. Restart once, and if you add graph presets later, restart again to see them in the dropdown.

Traps

"It says it needs ComfyUI-MiniMaxH3Mod." Accurate, not a broken install. Install the pack and restart; the StarNodes node found nothing to delegate to.

Outdated dependency, mismatched menus. The dropdown values come from the MiniMaxH3Mod version you have loaded. If its curve lists grew since your clone, update the dependency pack.

Two retention numbers. The loader rows carry their own strengths and retention multiplies them - if a reference feels weaker than the number you set, check the loader row first.