The most important part of this release is the three new nodes for Nuke, and what it basically means is that we brought blendshapes to Nuke. You can join geometries with the same topology to create a new geometry with blendshapes which you can animate without leaving Nuke. You can also join animated geometries and mix them with different ratios. You can pass geometry with blendshapes to GeoTracker, track it and then animate the blendshapes on the already tracked geometry. And finally, the FACS node creates 51 ARKit-compatible FACS blendshapes for FaceBuilder geometry right in Nuke, so you can animate a FaceBuilder head, or track it with FaceTracker and then adjust expressions using the blendshapes.
Watch the short overview to see how it all works:
All three nodes are free while in beta. We’re really hungry for your feedback here! Please don’t hesitate to ask questions and suggest ideas related to the new nodes!
To track precisely, you want your keyframes to be consistent, and to help you make them as consistent as possible we reworked the viewport stabilisation in GeoTracker and FaceTracker. It now stabilises the viewer around the object or around selected pins wherever they reside on the screen. Watch this video:
Both FaceBuilders — for Nuke and Blender have been reworked from scratch and got a new auto-reducing algorithm for pins, which smoothes the facebuilding process. In addition, the Blender add-on now uses a local viewport with better performance and got user preferences. Finally, a proper updater was added — forget about downloading and deleting ZIP-files — just push the buttons and follow the instructions on the tool panel.
As always, we're always happy to see your feedback! Please share your thoughts!