Ubisoft Open-Sources the CHORD Model and ComfyUI Nodes for End-to-End PBR Material Generation

Ubisoft La Forge Releases Open-Source PBR Material Model CHORD

We're excited to announce Ubisoft La Forge has publicly released its CHORD PBR material estimation framework alongside ComfyUI-Chord custom node implementation for creating comprehensive AI-driven material workflows.

Current State of AAA Game Material Development

In top-tier game production, physically-based rendering materials form the cornerstone of visual authenticity. Major titles demand hundreds of reusable assets featuring complete texture sets adhering to svBRDF specifications. Conventionally, texture artists craft these through photogrammetry, procedural methods, and intensive manual refinement—a resource-intensive process requiring specialized expertise.

Ubisoft's generative material prototype directly addresses this bottleneck, with ComfyUI workflows producing PBR texture sets compatible with DCC tools and game engines for prototyping.

ComfyUI as Production Platform

Ubisoft selected ComfyUI based on practical production needs:

"Considering our prototype's multi-stage nature, ComfyUI offers an efficient framework for integrated workflows handling texture synthesis, material estimation, and upscaling. This enables leveraging cutting-edge generative models with precise creator controls through ControlNets, image guidance, inpainting, and numerous other options."
— Ubisoft La Forge Blog

For major studios, the requirement isn't another image generator but an adaptable AI workflow platform meeting bespoke game development demands.

Generative Material Pipeline Stages

The CHORD model integrates into a three-stage pipeline:

1. Texture Generation: Creates seamless 2D textures from prompts or references using customized diffusion models

2. CHORD Material Estimation: Converts textures into complete PBR maps through chained decomposition and unified prediction

3. Material Upscaling: Enhances CHORD's 1024-resolution output to 2K/4K production-ready assets

This pipeline enables artists to rapidly iterate concepts and integrate AI-generated assets within existing workflows.

Implementing CHORD in ComfyUI

Ubisoft has open-sourced CHORD model weights and ComfyUI workflows covering texture generation and material estimation stages:

1. Install/update ComfyUI

2. Install CHORD custom node

3. Place model weights in ./ComfyUI/models/checkpoints

4. Load CHORD example workflow

CHORD Example Workflow

Texture generation models can be substituted, and workflow modules operate independently. For tileable textures, use the SDXL + CHORD workflow.

Sample Outputs

CHORD's release signifies ComfyUI's evolution from community tool to production platform. Studio users can construct complete pipelines from input to engine integration, with stages operating independently within existing systems.

We congratulate and thank the Ubisoft La Forge team for contributing production-grade tools to open-source. We anticipate industrial graphics AI continuing to build on open foundations.

Happy creating!