Facebuilder is out now on The Foundry Nuke, making 3D modelling of faces a whole lot easier, no matter the type.

Users of digital compositing tool Nuke looking to easily build 3D face models will be pleased to hear that beta plugin Facebuilder has now been officially released for the software – and anyone who’s had problems modelling with faces from a wider sort of spectrum might also find something to celebrate here.

Created by KeenTools, Facebuilder has been developed to guess how to change the model so it can fit while you’re shaping it. To train the node, KenTools used reference models of children, the elderly and people of all races, as can be seen below.

The plugin also lets Nuke users extract a ‘neutral face’ from footage, handy if you have no access to the original model and only have recordings to play around with. You can also export only the parts of the head that you really need.

When the model is ready, you can track it with Kentools’ GeoTracker if you need simple tracking, or FaceTracker if you need to track facial expressions. You can then easily adjust pins as the software is built upon Kentools’ PinTool, includes all its capabilities such as advanced model drawing, exporting options, and focal length estimation.

Using all the pins from all keyframes, FaceBuilder recalculates the resulting model’s shape and model’s position within each keyframe.

Facebuilder can be used with video as a source or a series of photos, as long as the latter all have the same resolution. You can then extract your model as an FBX file if needed.

Future updates will allow you to create your own custom head model, and the possibility of extracting from photos of various resolutions. Check out a tutorial here on how to use the current iteration.

Or check render ready character 3D models here.