Struggling amateur with decent gear: How to fix "gummy" skin and bad scene integration? (Juggernaut Ragnarok)
Hi everyone,
I’m a bit of an amateur when it comes to ComfyUI, and I’ve reached a point where I’m feeling completely lost. I’m quite busy with my day job, so I don’t have as much time as I’d like to dive into the deep technicalities, although I’m planning to focus on this much more in the future.
My current situation: I’ve managed to get a basic LoRA workflow running where I can generate great images of my character just from prompts. My custom LoRAs (trained in Kohya) work perfectly there. However, where I completely fail is trying to place my character into a specific scene or "overwriting" a character in an existing image (inpainting).
Why I moved to ComfyUI: I originally tried using simpler tools like Nano Banana, but the restrictions regarding bikinis and similar themes made it impossible to work with. I moved to ComfyUI for the freedom and the power of local generation.
The Problem: Whenever I try something more advanced than a basic prompt (using IP-Adapter, Florence-2 for masking, or ControlNets), the results look "gummy," plastic, and cheap. I’m using a decent setup (MSI Titan Laptop with 5090 24GB VRAM 96GB DDR5) and the Juggernaut XL Ragnarok (2026) model, so I know the hardware and the model aren't the issue. It's definitely my workflow.
What I've tried to fix the "plastic" skin:
- IP-Adapter FaceID Plus v2 (with attention masks for the face).
- ControlNet OpenPose & Depth (trying to keep the pose but struggling with texture).
- Ultimate SD Upscale (trying to add detail, but it just upscales the "gummy" look).
- Layer Diffusion (tried to generate on transparent layers, but I'm getting lost in the nodes).
My goal: I want to be able to realistically place my character into a scene without that "AI-smudge" look. Eventually, I’d love to move into animation, but for now, I just want to master character-to-scene integration so it looks like a real photograph, not a plastic toy.
I’m attaching my .json workflow. If any pro user could take a look and point out where I’m over-complicating things or where the bottleneck is, I’d be incredibly grateful. I have some power but I do not have any skills with Comfy UI.
A note on my struggle: I’ve spent a lot of time consulting with Gemini and ChatGPT to troubleshoot this, and while they are okay for basic logic, I’ve realized that no AI can solve this specific issue for me. I’m not sure if Claude would be any better, but I think the real bottleneck is my own lack of knowledge.
ComfyUI is massive, and I simply don’t know all the nodes that exist. Honestly, when I see some of the advanced workflows out there, I’m just staring at them in total awe and confusion. I’m out of my depth here and need a human expert to point me in the right direction.
Images: https://limewire.com/d/XBVn7#aXyzhLBBSF
JSON Workflow: https://limewire.com/d/X76qm#QxcEBZtZpn
Thanks for any help!