For those who don’t know the tool: Keentools is a 3D tracking node for Nuke and an add-on for Blender and After Effects, sitting between matchmove and comp where your patience goes to die.
KeenTools shipped 2026.1.0 with a clear theme: newer host versions, fewer annoying edge cases, and one new refinement switch that trades absolute accuracy for steadier motion.
The Nuke package now supports Nuke 16.1 and Nuke 17.0 across the nodes in the package. The Blender pack now supports Blender 5.1. GeoTracker for After Effects fixes a bug that caused inverted mesh UVs when exporting to Alembic. TextureBuilder received a fix aimed at full compatibility with Nuke’s new USD-based 3D system.
Nuke: new Refine modes, same tracker
In Nuke, GeoTracker adds two Refine modes in the Smoothing tab: Precise and Smooth. Precise mode behaves like the prior default. It targets maximum tracking accuracy. The notes also call out a known downside: inconsistent keyframes can lead to tiny jumps. That matches the kind of micro jitter that can make a trcak feel wrong even when the overall solve looks solid.
Smooth mode aims to remove those tiny jumps when keyframes do not align perfectly. The release notes also state that Smooth can slightly affect absolute tracking accuracy. That makes the intent explicit: Smooth exists for shots where visual steadiness beats the last bit of numeric precision.
The update does not change the basic concept of GeoTracker. It gives artists a more direct choice at the end of the refinement step, instead of forcing endless keyframe nudging and re-running refine until the twitch goes away.
Host support matters here too. The same update adds Nuke 16.1 and Nuke 17.0 support across the nodes in the Nuke package. That helps facilities that keep multiple Nuke versions installed and need the same toolset available in both.
Nuke: TextureBuilder and USD
TextureBuilder received a fix intended to make it fully compatible with Nuke’s new USD-based 3D system. The release notes keep it at that level, with no extra detail about which USD features, scene layouts, or node setups the fix touches.
USD has a way of turning minor incompatibilities into big time sinks, because the problems tend to surface late, when a scene graph comes in from somewhere else and the viewer looks fine until it does not. This update targets that failure mode by addressing USD support inside TextureBuilder in the context of Nuke’s new 3D system.
Blender: 5.1 support and texturing repair
The Blender pack now supports Blender 5.1. including a fix for a texturing issue in GeoTracker and FaceTracker in Blender. After the fix, the texture grab works as it should.
After Effects: Alembic export UVs
GeoTracker for After Effects fixes a bug that caused inverted mesh UVs when exporting to Alembic. The release notes describe the fix as helpful for sending tracking data to third-party tools. The bug description stays specific to UV orientation during Alembic export.
UV flips can hide in plain sight, especially when a downstream tool or shader setup masks the problem until someone changes a render path. Fixing the export at the source reduces that risk when geometry leaves After Effects for another stage.
If you rely on Alembic in your handoff chain, test an export after updating and inspect UV orientation in the next tool in the chain using a known reference asset.
