ComfyUI + DaVinci Resolve: The Complete Setup Guide

What You Need Before Starting

This guide assumes you have DaVinci Resolve installed (Free or Studio). For the AI rendering side you will need:

An NVIDIA GPU with at least 8GB VRAM (10GB+ recommended for 512px renders)
Python 3.10 or 3.11
Git
~20GB of disk space for models

AMD GPUs are possible but require the DirectML or ROCm builds of ComfyUI. This guide focuses on NVIDIA/CUDA.

Step 1: Install ComfyUI

Clone the ComfyUI repository and install dependencies:

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

On Windows, use the ComfyUI portable package if you prefer to avoid Python environment management. On macOS, Apple Silicon users can use the MPS backend — set --use-mps when launching.

Step 2: Download the Required Models

ShotLock's default workflows require:

Base model: A Stable Diffusion 1.5 or SDXL checkpoint. For video work, Realistic Vision v6 or DreamShaper 8 work well for the cinematic presets.
IP-Adapter model: ip-adapter_sd15.safetensors (for SD1.5) or ip-adapter_xl.safetensors (for SDXL) — place in ComfyUI/models/ipadapter/
CLIP Vision model: clip_vision_g.safetensors — place in ComfyUI/models/clip_vision/
ControlNet model: control_v11p_sd15_canny.pth or the lineart variant — place in ComfyUI/models/controlnet/

Step 3: Install ComfyUI-Manager and Required Nodes

Navigate to ComfyUI/custom_nodes/ and clone ComfyUI-Manager:

git clone https://github.com/ltdrdata/ComfyUI-Manager.git

Restart ComfyUI, then install these node packs via the Manager UI:

ComfyUI IPAdapter Plus
ComfyUI ControlNet Auxiliary Preprocessors

Step 4: Launch ComfyUI

From the ComfyUI directory:

python main.py --listen 127.0.0.1 --port 8188

ComfyUI should now be accessible at http://127.0.0.1:8188. Leave this running in the background while you use ShotLock.

Step 5: Install ShotLock

Run the ShotLock installer and point it at your ComfyUI URL:

bash install.sh --license-key YOUR_KEY

The installer creates a backend launcher at ~/.shotlock/start-backend.sh and installs the Resolve panel script. Open DaVinci Resolve → Workspace → Scripts → ShotLock to launch the panel.

VRAM Management Tips

Use 512×512 frame size for most work — SDXL at 1024px requires significantly more VRAM
Set --lowvram when launching ComfyUI if you have less than 8GB
Close other GPU-heavy applications (games, other AI tools) during render jobs
The cleanup worker in ShotLock clears temp frames after each job to free disk space