I hope this finds everyone well.

I can't seem to get Face Refinement to work. I add a node, go to the OpenFX tab and add the Face Refinement plugin, make sure Show Overlay is checked, make sure OpenFX Overlay is selected in the lower left of the monitor and I get nothing. It seems to perform the track but no Overlay shows and nothing happens once the track is completed. None of the settings do anything, even when cranked all the way.

I even took a raw clip with no correction and tried the Face Refinement plugin as the only node and I get the same result. Nothing.

Am I missing something? Is the scene possibly to difficult for a track to happen?

Thanks for your time!

So doing a test this morning, I brought up another clip where the subject was prominent. Low and behold, the Face Refinement mask works. It must be that particular shot where the subject is laying down in the flowers that confuses the system to not recognize the face.

Is there a way to manually select the face mask and tell it where the face is to track?

The reason is we shot outdoors and the subject has very fair skin and I was hoping to balance the highlights and shadows on the face.

Thanks for any input!

Having the same issue, only I DO get a mask half way through the clip.
Any suggestions to force a mask from the start?

I just tried this and it seemed to work to keep Face Refinement from recognizing a face that it had no problem with. (Sort of the opposite of your problem, but I think applicable.)

I created a Correction node before the Correction node onto which I'd dragged the Face Refinement. (I assume it works the same if you drag Face Refinement directly, but I always drag onto a Correction node.)

Then I created a Power Window, inverted it and used the color wheels to take everything outside of the Power Window to black. When the Power Widow was off of the face, Face Refinement did not find it, and when it was on the face -- or if there were no initial node at all -- it found the face.

So I assume you could create a Correction before, Power Window -- and track if necessary -- over the face, and bring the rest of the image besides the face to black. In a harder case, do an Inside to make the face more face-ish -- think like an algorithm -- and then an Outside to blacken everything else.

I remember the tip -- but had to work out the details -- from one of Darren Mostyn's Youtube videos.

Some general tips for Face Refinement:

1) you often get better results if you use PTZR to zoom into the face and THEN run the F.R. analysis mode. Once it's tracked, go back to normal framing and the mask should still fit.

2) if there's conflicts in the background, consider using a temporary black mask in a previous node to mask out everything else except the face. This will give F.R.'s internal engine fewer distractions to work with. This is particularly useful if you have 2 or more people in the same shot.

3) note that it's possible to use a mask on top of F.R. in case it's catching any details behind the actor's face. Of course, you can also manually adjust the size of the F.R. mask area itself.

4) I find that F.R. alone is not enough to add beauty to actors of a certain age. I find you also have to pay attention to their neck, visible chest, and hands, and you've got to blur or denoise or use Minus Midtone.

5) I also think you have to use manual methods to get rid of crow's feet and jowls, which often have to be windowed and tracked. The OFX Beauty plug-in is a good way to use frequency-selection to only soften the skin details and leave everything else intact.

6) the moment the actor turns sideways or otherwise gets covered up, F.R. can't recover, and for that, you have to go to an all-manual method. It takes more than 9 power windows to duplicate what Face Refinement does, and while it can be done, it takes time and a lot of thought to pull it off effectively. Always remember that anything Face Refinement can do, you can also do manually... but it's a lot of work.