Davinci Resolve 21 has seen a ton of cool new features added to the platform. Some basic stuff that people have requested for ages, and some more advanced ones that nobody was expecting. As well as a built-in feature called AI Face Age Transformer they have also added a Face Reshaper tool that lets you adjust and modify facial features in a video, allowing you to reshape things like the jawline, eyes, nose and overall proportions while preserving facial tracking and motion. Since it's not the easiest thing to find, we'll guide you through everything.

Takeaways:

  1. Where is the Face Reshaper in DaVinci Resolve?
  2. How do you use Face Reshaper in DaVinci Resolve?

How to Use Face Reshaper in DaVinci Resolve

Before you will be able to get access to thes feature you'll need to make sure that you have updated to Davinci Resolve 21 or newer. This feature isn't available on older versions.

  • First go to the Color page.
  • Open the Effects Library.
  • Search for Face Reshaper.
  • Drag it onto your node.

How to Use Face Reshaper in DaVinci Resolve

  • Once applied, the effect becomes part of your node tree and can be adjusted in real time. Just like any of the other effects.
  • After applying the effect you'll want to do a couple more things in order for it to work properly.
  • Run face detection on the frame.
  • The software will identify the subject and draw a tracking box.
  • Track the face through the clip.
  • This step will make sure that the reshaping stays locked onto the subject as they move. If you don't do this it will not work.

When Tracking Finishes Adjust Facial Features

Once the tracking process has fully finished you can start adjusting just about any part of the face using the options and sliders in the tab on the right.

  • Adjust things like eye size, nose width, jawline and face proportions
  • Use the sliders to push or pull different features depending on the look you're going for
  • Lower values will result in more subtle and natural looking changes
  • Higher values can quickly start to look exaggerated or unnatural
  • Unlike aging tools, you're not setting an age here, you're directly modifying facial structure. Small adjustments usually look the best.

Use Face Reshaper in DaVinci Resolve

This Process is Super Resource Heavy

Just like a lot of the other options on the colour page Face Reshaper is also super resource intensive so you can expect quite a long wait for the process to complete. The clip will also be quite slow and clunking in the timeline as well. Though you can speed things up using Background Rendering.

This effect is computationally heavy, especially in high resolution projects. So performance depends on your system and timeline settings. In 4K projects, playback may not be real time even on powerful hardware. So if you are struggling you can try a couple of basic performance boosting changes.

  • Lower playback resolution
  • Disable overlays during playback
  • Allow time for tracking to complete

Once it has fully processed, the effect updates across the tracked face throughout the clip and the result can look surprisingly clean, if the recorded footage was good quality with good lighting. Otherwise it can look off pretty quickly. Like most of these tools, it works best as a subtle adjustment rather than something extreme.