Installation

AIFX ships as a set of OpenFX plugin bundles (.ofx.bundle directories). Any application implementing the OpenFX 1.4 standard or later will discover and load them from the standard plugin directory for your operating system.

This page covers installing the plugins. The companion document ComfyUI server setup covers the model server side, which is required for the plugins to do useful work.

Standard OpenFX plugin directories

OS System-wide Per-user
macOS /Library/OFX/Plugins ~/Library/OFX/Plugins
Linux /usr/OFX/Plugins ~/OFX/Plugins
Windows %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\OFX\Plugins %LOCALAPPDATA%\OFX\Plugins

The host application reads from these directories at startup. Restart the host after installing or updating plugins.

Installing prebuilt bundles

Prebuilt binaries are published on the GitHub Releases page, organized per operating system.

Platform Asset Built?
macOS (universal: arm64 + x86_64) aifx-<version>-macos-installer.dmg (wizard, recommended) or aifx-<version>-macos-universal.tar.gz (manual) ✅ Available from v0.1.0
Windows (x86_64) aifx-<version>-windows-setup.exe (wizard, recommended) or aifx-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip (manual) ✅ Installer from v0.1.12; zip from v0.1.0
Linux (x86_64) aifx-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz ✅ Available from v0.1.0 (glibc 2.34+)
  1. Download aifx-<version>-macos-installer.dmg from the latest release and double-click it.

  2. Copy AIFX Installer.app out of the mounted DMG (e.g. to /Applications), then clear the download quarantine flag and launch it:

    cp -R "/Volumes/AIFX <version>/AIFX Installer.app" /Applications/
find "/Applications/AIFX Installer.app" -exec xattr -d com.apple.quarantine {} \; 2>/dev/null
open "/Applications/AIFX Installer.app"

    The installer is not yet signed with an Apple Developer ID, so macOS 15 (Sequoia) refuses to launch it directly — “Apple could not verify ‘AIFX Installer.app’ is free of malware”. Neither right-click → Open nor the Open Anyway button in System Settings is offered for an app with no signature; the command above is the way through. Copying out of the DMG first is required because the mounted volume is read-only. See Troubleshooting.

  3. The wizard walks you through:
    • Install location: system-wide /Library/OFX/Plugins/ (default) or per-user ~/Library/OFX/Plugins/. Autodesk Flame and Flare only scan the system-wide directory — a per-user install leaves the plugins invisible to them. System-wide asks for an administrator password once; per-user needs none and works with Nuke, Resolve and Fusion.
    • Site configuration: ComfyUI server URL + port, this Mac’s view of the shared folder (typically /Volumes/<share>/<root>), and the ComfyUI server’s view of the same shared folder (typically a Windows UNC path like \\<server-host>\<share>\<root>). These values are baked into each plugin’s defaults.json before the bundle is copied into your OFX directory.
    • Optional skip: tick “Keep each plugin’s bundled defaults” if you’d rather configure everything in your host UI on first use.
  4. Click Install. The wizard copies the seven bundles, writes the site config into each, and clears macOS quarantine.
  5. Restart your OFX host. The plugins appear under the AIFX category.

The installer is unsigned in v0.1.x. On first launch macOS will ask you to confirm — right-click → Open, or run find '/path/to/AIFX Installer.app' -exec xattr -d com.apple.quarantine {} \;. A signed + notarised installer is planned for a follow-up patch release.

macOS (manual: the tarball)

If you’d rather wire everything by hand (or you’re scripting deployment), download aifx-<version>-macos-universal.tar.gz instead. From v0.2.3 it ships an install.sh that does the whole job — same prompts as the wizard, same defaults.json keys, and never blocked by Gatekeeper, because a script run from a terminal is not gatekeeper-assessed the way an app launch is:

tar xzf aifx-<version>-macos-universal.tar.gz
cd AIFX-<version>-macos-universal
./install.sh               # /Library/OFX/Plugins — the default; required for Flame / Flare
./install.sh --user        # ~/Library/OFX/Plugins — no sudo; Nuke, Resolve, Fusion only

Run ./install.sh --help for the non-interactive flags used in fleet rollouts. To wire it by hand instead, extract, move the seven .ofx.bundle directories into your OFX plugin directory, clear the quarantine bit with find ~/Library/OFX/Plugins -exec xattr -d com.apple.quarantine {} \; 2>/dev/null, restart your host, and override the bundled defaults.json per the Configuration & defaults guide.

  1. Download aifx-<version>-windows-setup.exe from the latest release and run it.
  2. The wizard walks you through:
    • Install location: system-wide %COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\OFX\Plugins\ (default — needs admin; the only path Flame and Flare scan) or, if you pick “install for me only”, per-user %LOCALAPPDATA%\OFX\Plugins\, which Nuke, Resolve and Fusion read but Autodesk hosts ignore.
    • Site configuration: ComfyUI server address + port, this PC’s view of the shared folder (Local Storage Mount — leave blank to reuse the server view), and the ComfyUI server’s view of the same shared folder (typically a UNC path like \\<server-host>\<share>\<root>), plus the job timeout and an “enable processing by default” toggle. These values are baked into each plugin’s defaults.json before the bundles are copied into your OFX directory.
    • Optional skip: tick “keep each plugin’s bundled defaults” if you’d rather configure everything in your host UI on first use.
  3. Click Install. The wizard copies the seven bundles and writes the site config into each.
  4. Ensure the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64) is installed on the machine — the plugins link against the standard MSVC runtime. Most systems already have it; otherwise install it from Microsoft.
  5. Restart your OFX host. The plugins appear under the AIFX category.

The installer is unsigned in v0.1.x. On first run Windows SmartScreen may warn — click More info → Run anyway. A signed installer is planned for a follow-up patch release. You can remove the plugins later from Settings → Apps (it only deletes the seven AIFX bundles, leaving any other OFX plugins in the directory untouched).

Windows (manual: the zip)

  1. Download aifx-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip from the latest release and extract it. You will get a directory containing seven .ofx.bundle directories.
  2. Copy all seven .ofx.bundle directories into one of the standard OFX plugin paths from the table above (%LOCALAPPDATA%\OFX\Plugins\ is the safest choice — per-user, no admin rights needed).
  3. Ensure the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64) is installed on the machine — the plugins link against the standard MSVC runtime. Most systems already have it; otherwise install it from Microsoft.
  4. Restart your OFX host. The plugins appear under the AIFX category.
  5. Configure for your network — point each plugin at your ComfyUI server and shared folders per Configuration & defaults.

Linux

  1. Download aifx-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz from the latest release and extract it. You will get a directory containing seven .ofx.bundle directories.
  2. Copy all seven .ofx.bundle directories into one of the standard OFX plugin paths from the table above (~/OFX/Plugins/ is the safest choice — per-user, no sudo).
  3. The binaries require glibc 2.34 or later (Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, RHEL/Rocky 9+). On older hosts (Ubuntu 20.04, RHEL/Rocky 8, CentOS 7) they will not load — build from source instead.
  4. Restart your OFX host. The plugins appear under the AIFX category.
  5. Configure for your network — point each plugin at your ComfyUI server and shared folders per Configuration & defaults.

Building from source

Prerequisites

  • CMake 3.28 or later
  • Conan 2.1 or later
  • A C++17 compiler:
    • macOS: Xcode command line tools (Apple Clang)
    • Linux: GCC 10+ or Clang 12+
    • Windows: Visual Studio 2022 with the C++ workload
  • Git
  • Linux only: the static C++ runtime (libstdc++.a). Each .ofx links libstdc++/libgcc statically so it carries its own std::filesystem — without this the plugin binds to the host’s C++ runtime and crashes in DaVinci Resolve. It ships with the g++ dev package on Debian/Ubuntu (build-essential); on Rocky/RHEL it is a separate CRB-repo package: 
    sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb && sudo dnf install libstdc++-static

    (tools/setup-env.sh checks for this and offers to install it.)

Set up the build environment

Before building any plugin you need a Conan default profile. The build resolves all of its C/C++ dependencies through Conan, and build-plugin.sh runs conan install ... -pr:b=default on every build — without a default profile that step fails immediately. Create it once per machine:

conan profile detect

This inspects your compiler and writes ~/.conan2/profiles/default. You only need to do this once; build-plugin.sh handles the per-build conan install for you from then on.

On a fresh machine you can let the bootstrap script do this for you. It checks for Git / CMake / Python, installs Conan (pip install 'conan>=2.1.0'), runs conan profile detect, and creates the standard OFX plugin directories:

./tools/setup-env.sh          # macOS / Linux
./tools/setup-env.ps1         # Windows (PowerShell)

Build 

git clone https://github.com/Dev-Reepost/aifx.git
cd AIFX

# Build and install every plugin listed in plugins/manifest.txt into the
# per-user OFX directory:
while read -r dir target _; do
  case "$dir" in ''|\#*) continue ;; esac
  ./tools/build-plugin.sh "plugins/$dir" "$target" --install
done < plugins/manifest.txt

To build a single plugin, pass its directory and CMake target name. The target differs from the directory name and must be passed explicitly — the build cannot infer it. The authoritative directory-to-target list is plugins/manifest.txt (the same file the loop above and the release scripts read). For example, to build just Depth Anything V3:

./tools/build-plugin.sh plugins/depth_da3 DepthAnything3 --install

The --install flag copies the resulting .ofx.bundle into your per-user OFX plugin directory. Without it, the bundle is left under build/Release/.

For a system-wide install, run with elevated privileges and pass an explicit install path:

sudo ./tools/build-plugin.sh plugins/depth_da3 DepthAnything3 --install \
  --install-dir /Library/OFX/Plugins

Build options

Option Effect
-d, --debug Debug build (slower, larger, with symbols).
-c, --clean Wipe build/ first for a clean rebuild.
-v, --verbose Verbose CMake / build output.
--bundle-name "Name" Override the bundle directory name.
--install Copy the built bundle to the OFX plugin directory.
--install-dir <path> Override the install destination.

Universal binaries on macOS

The build defaults to a universal binary (arm64 + x86_64). To build for the host architecture only, pass -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=arm64 (or x86_64) to CMake.

Verifying the install

  1. Restart your OFX host.
  2. Open the effect / filter browser.
  3. Look under the AIFX category.
  4. Apply one of the plugins to a clip and check that the parameters panel appears.

If the plugins do not appear:

  • Confirm the .ofx.bundle directories are inside one of the standard plugin paths from the table above (not nested in a subdirectory).
  • Confirm the bundle structure is intact: each .ofx.bundle must contain a Contents/<arch>/ directory with the .ofx shared library.
  • Check the host’s OFX plugin loading log if it has one.
  • See Troubleshooting.

The plugin will appear in the host even when no ComfyUI server is running. The plugin only fails when you actually invoke a render. Set up the server side next: ComfyUI server setup.

Plugin code is BSD-3-Clause. Model weights are subject to their upstream licenses; see each plugin page. Images from upstream model authors are reproduced for documentation purposes under applicable fair-use / fair-dealing provisions with attribution; see the credits page. Built by MaGMa for Reepost Studio. Funded by CNC (Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée).

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