[Feature Request]: Improve Group Node UX with Subgraphs

[ronan36880]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues and checked the recent builds/commits

What would your feature do ?

This change would make editing and working with group nodes much easier. This is something that apparently has been discussed a lot in the past, and seeing that the frontend can evolve much faster (and better!) now, I think it would be a good idea to bring it up again.

Proposed workflow

I don't think I would do it justice to propose a workflow for this.
Instead, having a read through this issue and through some of the issues brought up in this comment should provide a lot of context on previous discussions on this.

Additional information

No response

[JorgeR81]

Now that this PR is merged ( comfyanonymous/ComfyUI#2666 ), it should be easier to implement subgraphs, right ?

There is already an extension for Subgraph nodes:
https://github.com/vivax3794/ComfyUI-Sub-Nodes

But I think a feature as important as this, should be in the core.

[mijuku233]

Now that this PR is merged ( comfyanonymous/ComfyUI#2666 ), it should be easier to implement subgraphs, right ?

There is already an extension for Subgraph nodes: https://github.com/vivax3794/ComfyUI-Sub-Nodes

But I think a feature as important as this, should be in the core.

It looks similar to blender's nodegroup, which is what people want GroupNode.

[JorgeR81]

It looks similar to blender's nodegroup, which is what people want GroupNode.

I wonder if some of the code used for the current Group Nodes could be reused.
Now, we can edit Group Nodes to some extent.

But to add nodes to a Group Node, we need to convert back to nodes; edit the nodes; and then convert to Group Node again. 
I'd like to edit the Group Node, like on a regular Comfy UI a workflow, without this process.

[set-soft]

Note that this isn't just aesthetic, this could help to discourage the proliferation of node variants. At least for the ones you must install and can't be just exported as JSON itself.

If the core nodes provides a good amount of simple primitives people could just regroup them as needed, instead of needing a custom group that reinvents the wheel just to group functionality in a different way.

In the past I used simulation software for FPGAs that uses graphs similar to the ones used by ComfyUI, the nested nodes was a key feature, I was really surprised when I found it was impossible using ComfyUI.

[liulsg]

Why such an important function has not been paid attention to is really curious.

[set-soft]

Why such an important function has not been paid attention to is really curious.

I guess this is because the developers are happy with the option to collapse various nodes into one. Which is useful, but is much less interesting than supporting nested nodes. Subgraphs allows to edit them, while un/compressing becomes impractical once you defined a nodes layout.

[webfiltered]

An RFC for subgraphs has been created: https://github.com/Comfy-Org/rfcs/blob/subgraph/rfcs/0000-subgraph.md

Discussion: Comfy-Org/rfcs#17

[geroldmeisinger]

subgraphs are implemented https://blog.comfy.org/p/subgraphs-are-coming-to-comfyui