An applied preset with a mask is not displayed or is not located on a face
However, people in video may move around, so you need to track the moving face to get a perfect swaping face video. Tracking the motion of an object in Adobe After Effects can be incredibly complicated when tracking complex motions, so in this article, we are going to take you through the basic steps of motion tracking that will enable you to. Mar 29, 2019 Add a motion-tracking animation. Select your video's title again by clicking it in the lower-left corner of the window, then do the following: Click Animation; Click Track Motion; If the Track Motion button is grayed out, make sure your video is selected by clicking its title in the project pane.
Make sure you are using the latest version of the preset package.
Presets with a Mask or presets from the Makeup category do not work
If you use AE Face Tools in After Effects CC 2018, then, unfortunately, some presets do not work correctly in this version. In this case, please upgrade your version of After Effects to the current one.

How to apply presets to multiple faces on the same footage
For each face, you need to make tracking on a separate layer.
For example, if you have two faces in a footage, do the following:
1 Make tracking for a first face and apply a preset to it.
2 Duplicate the face footage layer and delete all the data from the previous tracking, including the mask and the marker “Rest Pose” from it.
3 Make tracking for a second face.
4 Make sure you select the second face footage layer and then apply a preset to it.
Error: For this preset, you need to select the layer with tracked face
Make sure that you have completed all the necessary steps for face tracking in After Effects.
You can find step-by-step guide in the Motion Bro section: Packs > AE Face Tools > HOW-TO-USE
The most common mistake is that the user skipped Step 6: Set Rest Pose > Extract & Copy Face Measurements

The face tracker is an innovative tool that Adobe introduced with its 2015 After Effects CC release and it enables you to track faces very accurately. You can then use masks or different effects on the track region to bring your editing to a whole new level
This feature is great for tracking videos and shots with faces pointed mostly at the camera and it’s a great shortcut to getting a face outline quickly
So let’s go ahead and take a look at how to use this amazing feature step by step
- First, as usual, we’ll import a footage file inside After Effects and create a new comp from it
Next, we’ll need to select the mask tool by clicking on it in the tools panel or you can press “Q” to jump to the feature and press it again until you reach the “Ellipse Tool” section
We’ll create a simple elliptical mask around the face
Next, we’ll need to right click on the mask in the composition panel, and choose “Track Mask”
This will bring up the tracker menu with various options and methods from tracking and for this example, we’ll choose “Outline Only”. The more advanced “Details Features” will pick up the locations of facial features. This will improve the mask and add various additional points to get a nice curved mask around the face
Click the play button to start tracking forward
The mask will change its position and shape as the subject moves
Once the tracking is done, we can assign the mask as an effect
The face mask behaves like a regular mask, and it can be feathered, expanded or it can have various settings for the opacity
We can apply various effects straight on the footage – as the mask is assigned to work as an effect and a good option for this would be to use the fast blur to mask out the face. This is a nice alternative to using regular tracking for this blurring purpose- If you’d like to track specific points in a person’s face, such as the eyes or the mouth, you can set the tracker to Face Tracking – Detailed Features Mode
- Using this technique you can change a person’s eye color or change the position and movement of the mouth, without having to manually place keyframes
This type of tracking will also give you information on have open an eye is or how open the mouth is across the timeline- You can export all this data to Adobe Character Animator and perform character animation and movement
Face Tracking After Effects Cs6
Things to consider when applying this method:
- The bigger the face is in the actual shot, the more pixels AE will have to analyze, so the longer it will take
- After masking, make sure you have your mask selected in order for your tracker panel to show up
Face Tracking In After Effects
We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and please stay tuned for more cool posts coming soon.
