KeenTools 2022.2.0 (4 August 2022)

Changes in Nuke package

  • FaceBuilder can reconstruct faces with finer details
  • Added MetaHuman-compatible UV layout to FaceBuilder
  • GeoTracker, FaceTracker: added transform handles in 2D, improved in 3D
  • FaceBuilder, FaceTracker: fixed align face for anamorphic footage and translated cameras
  • Nuke 11 support removed
  • Many minor fixes and UI tweaks

Changes in FaceBuilder for Blender

  • FaceBuilder can reconstruct faces with finer details
  • Added MetaHuman-compatible UV layout
  • Many minor fixes and UI tweaks

New level likeness in FaceBuilder

This release brings a groundbreaking improvement to FaceBuilder — now, when you drag pins, they affect nearby regions in a smart way, leaving the unrelated facial parts unchanged. With this improvement, pining becomes more detailed, for example lip corners, curved noses and skin folds are not a problem now. As an outcome, 3D models resemble people from photos far better than before, increasing the variety of potential use cases for FaceBuilder.

Create MetaHumans from Photos

One of these new use-cases can be creating a MetaHuman out of a real person. As you must have heard, Epic Games recently released the Mesh to MetaHuman plugin which can wrap any 3D model of a human head and create a MetaHuman character based on the wrapped mesh. This of course means that you can also load a FaceBuilder into Unreal Engine and create a MetaHuman out of it. But to make the union of FaceBuilder and MetaHuman even better, in this release we added the new ‘mh’ texture map which is compatible with the texture layout of MetaHuman. It gives you a way to improve the MetaHuman texture by transferring facial features such as birthmarks or scars from photos with the help of the texture generated in FaceBuilder. The whole procedure is covered in this guide.

In conclusion, the mix of FaceBuilder and MetaHuman is perhaps the easiest way to transfer a real person to a game engine with the highest level of likeness!

Nuke nodes: 2D/3D transform handles

Speaking about our package for Nuke, apart from the refreshed FaceBuilder, users might be pleased to find updated transform handles (aka Axis controls) in all of our 3D nodes — their reliability was improved in 3D mode, and now they can be used in 2D mode too. By the way, it’s worth mentioning that since this update, our plugins for Nuke 11 and earlier will receive only maintenance updates. All new features will be available in Nuke 12+.

As usual, 30 days of the fully-featured trial included upon the first installation.