Tripo3DtoTD

Tripo3DtoTD moves Tripo3D's generated GLB models into TouchDesigner as colored point clouds. It takes a model file path, loads it, and streams the vertices plus colors over WebSocket, where the ComfyUI2TD.tox component parses them into a point-cloud CHOP. The upstream is ComfyUI-Tripo, and here's the bit the README is proud of: the API configuration era is over. You no longer register on the Tripo website or paste in an API key - the official ComfyUI interface calls Tripo's services directly, so the workflow is just ComfyUI-Tripo → this node → TD.

That makes this one of the friendlier 3D paths in the pack: Tripo3D is a strong, fast text/image-to-3D service, and the key-free setup removes the single biggest friction point. For a realtime TD project it means you can generate a 3D asset from a prompt, watch it arrive as a point cloud, and iterate - no manual file export, no outside API dashboard.

How it works

The model_file input is a path to the GLB. The node resolves relative paths against ComfyUI's output directory, and it will also handle absolute paths and even http(s):// URLs. The file is loaded with trimesh; scene geometry is concatenated; normals are fixed; and vertex colors are extracted - or baked from the texture map when the mesh only has UVs, defaulting to a neutral gray when there's no color data at all. Everything gets packed into a binary PLY (position + RGBA per vertex) and shipped over the WebSocket for the tox to parse into CHOPs.

The inputs

An output node - the point cloud shows up in TD.

• model_file - required STRING. The GLB path from ComfyUI-Tripo's output (or any GLB you point it at).
• broadcast - off by default (current client only).

Install

Pack first:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/JiSenHua/ComfyUI-TD.git

(or ComfyUI Manager, search ComfyUI-TD). Then install ComfyUI-Tripo from VAST-AI-Research, plus the ComfyUI2TD.tox component (v5.1.x+). Note that as of the README's update, Tripo3D uses the official ComfyUI interface - if you run across old tutorials telling you to apply for a Tripo API key and configure it, that path is deprecated.

Gotchas

Same mental model as the other 3D nodes: what arrives in TD is a point cloud, not a textured mesh - vertices and colors rendered as points, ideal for realtime visuals but not a shaded surface. Because model_file is just a path string, keep an eye on where ComfyUI-Tripo writes its output; relative paths resolve against ComfyUI's output folder, and if you feed a path to a file that doesn't exist there, the load fails at trimesh. And if Tripo3D's remote generation is slow on your network, the whole loop - generate, download, convert, stream - is waiting on the service, so budget for that latency before you blame the node.