Didn’t you just post v.1.2? Yep! But Victoria’s been hard at work the last few days, and has some cool features ready to go that should simplify the compositing process. You can grab the new panel from her GitHub fork of K2P. (1.3 is not yet part of the main branch of the software, but will be shortly.) 1.3 is now part of the main app! Download the new version here.

New features in 1.3:

  • Axis Lock Controls for Character Precomps. Once your character’s rigged and animated, and you’re ready to add it to a scene, you can add these tools to its precomp with a click of a button. They enable you to lock the X, Y and/or Z-axis movement of the character’s overall position, and even keyframe your own position changes on top.
  • 3D Template: Automatic compensation for Z-axis movement. No more annoying stretchy scaling when your capture track has Z-axis motion! KinectToPin now keeps your character locked in a single depth plane, so you don’t have to do any manual scaling. Like so:
    KinectToPin-AutoZ-1
  • The overstretched guy on the left becomes the normally-proportioned guy on the right — no matter how much further toward or away from the camera he gets.

  • But what if I want my character to move in Z-space? Worry not! You can have your Z-movement back — minus the old scaling issues — when you get to the compositing stage. Just select your puppet’s precomp and click on the “Create Axis Controls for Character Precomp” button mentioned above. If the “Lock Z Axis” checkbox is disabled, KinectToPin will add back in the Z-movement removed by the 3D template.
  • New UI layout, thanks to Christopher R. Green’s excellent Boethos. It’s prettier and more intuitive, and still works in CS4+.
  • There’s also a minor bugfix for 1.2, where head, hand and foot layers weren’t zeroing out when rigged.

As usual, let us know if anything’s buggy or busted. There may be a few conflicts with Collapse Transformations.