3D animation software for physics-based character animation
With our physics tools and deep learning instruments, realistic action animation for movies and video games is now available for everyone.
Why Cascadeur ?
Cascadeur is a standalone 3D animation software for creating keyframe animation of 3D characters, humanoid or otherwise. Make realistic 3D animation from scratch or improve mocap, all while retaining full control over the results.
Cascadeur News: Free animation course, new forum, outlook on 2022.EA1
Dear Cascadeur user
The release of Cascadeur Early Access version 2022.EA1 is approaching, and we are glad to present you an overview of the planned features and improvements. In addition, we have summarised what else interesting has happened at Cascadeur in the last weeks.
Animation beginner's course on YouTube
Due to the great development progress of the past two years some of our video tutorials are already outdated. Our animation training expert Elena has therefore been working on a Cascadeur course over the past few weeks. The result of her work is a 7-part introductory course in physical correct character animation with Cascadeur. Each individual course unit consists of a video of about 15 to 20 minutes in length. Animation beginners who follow all given instructions should plan around 45 minutes work time per lesson.
Elena's Cascadeur course starts with an introduction to Cascadeur's user interface and goes on to cover topics such as posing, overlaps, working with the center of mass, ballistics and other important knowledge for character animators. All 7 lessons are freely available on our YouTube channel. (
First Cascadeur course launched at UK university
On February 7, the University of Salford Manchesterlaunched the world's first course in character animation with Cascadeur (https://www.salford.ac.uk/news/world-first-course-physics-based-character-animation) . Our team was live via video conference at the opening of the Cascadeur course. After a short welcome by our animation expert Elena, it was straight down to business for the 26 design students: Under the guidance of animation lecturer Johnathon Byrne and technical demonstrator Owen Calderbank, the curious students immediately took their first steps at 3D character posing.
With its AI-supported Auto Posing and Auto Physics tools, Cascadeur is a promising tool for training novice animators. Without having to deal with tedious technical details, one can give free rein to one's creativity - and thus get a motivating sense of achievement much sooner.
+++ Outlook on Cascadeur version 2022.EA1 +++
Most interesting features and improvements:
Viewport mouse input customization
Python API to add commands for automation
Node editor tool and Python API to allow low-level rig editing
Animation cycles enhancements
Better FBX support, including full support for DAZ characters
Autoposing - new IK-based system with improved behavior and performance. Also a head direction controller was added.
Physics tools - new option to smoothen the angular momentum and the speed of the character.
Improved secondary motion tool with more natural behavior and better customization
The release date of Cascadeur 2022-EA1 is not fixed yet, but we will inform you as usual on the day of the release!
Redesigned user forum
Cascadeur’s new user forum (https://cascadeur.com/forum?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=regular) is online! As you have probably noticed, our previous forum software was a "quick & dirty" solution that was not fully embedded into our website. So we carried out a complete redesign. Cascadeur’s new forum software offers a tidy, modern layout and numerous convenient functions, such as creating posts with file attachments, commenting on posts quickly, assigning likes and rating the most useful answers to a question. We hope that many of you will actively participate in the discussions so that our forum becomes a lively place where Cascadeur users can find answer to any questions and share their experience with the community. We plan to add additional features over the next weeks - and we are glad to hear your feedback! (mailto:info@cascadeur.com)
Cascadeur 2022.1EA introduces Python Scripting and Node Editor
We’re excited to announce that Cascadeur’s version 2022.1EA is now available to download (https://cascadeur.com/download) ! With this release, Nekki's physics-based animation software gets three new major features: A Node Editor, Python scripting and fully Customizable Viewport Controls.
Moreover many existing Cascadeur features receive improvements and an expanded range of functions: The reworked AutoPosing tool shows a huge performance boost in the new version. AutoPosing now also utilizes a brand new IK-based system, producing visibly better results compared to previous releases. On top of that we added tween-machine support for the controllers and a new direction controller for setting the character’s line of sight.
Cascadeur 2022.1EA introduces an alpha version of the long-awaited Constraints Feature, which has has the potential to significantly streamline the process of animating complex motions, especially those that involve things like tools or weapons
Cascadeur’s Physics Engine has also undergone some significant improvements: Now there is an option to smooth down the Character’s rotation speed, and an improved Secondary Motion tool, which offers new customization options and generally produces more natural-looking results. Animation Cycles now move along with the corresponding parts of the Timeline in the Track. And with the Stretching Mode you can regulate the length of an Animation Cycle without having to recreate it.
Eventually most of the reported compatibility issues in Cascadeur’s FBX Support have been fixed, and the FBX import of DAZ Studio characters is now fully supported.
+++ New Expert Features +++
Node Editor
The Node Editor (https://cascadeur.com/help/tools/animation_tools/node_editor) is a versatile instrument that allows animators to access the inner structure of character rigs and fully customize them. With access to these scripts advanced users will be able to change almost every aspect of a character. An illustrative example of the practical use of the Node Editor can be seen in the 2022.1EA teaser ( between 01m:35s and 01m:45s: The weapon shown there was dynamically connected to the character's hand just using the Node Editor and Python Scripting!
Python Scripting
Cascadeur’s new built-in Python API (https://cascadeur.com/help/tools/animation_tools/python_scripting_in_cascadeur) enables advanced animators to write their own command scripts and automate many operations. So if Cascadeur’s already built-in functionality isn't versatile enough for your needs, you can now either write simple scripts inside Cascadeur - or just paste complex Python scripts from external editors into the command console.
Customizable Viewport Controls
The new Input Settings (https://cascadeur.com/help/interface/main_menu/input_settings) window gives you an option to rebind any action - selecting objects, pan, zoom and so on - to a different key or set of keys.You can now apply the same control scheme to Cascadeur that you are used to when working with other 3D software. Especially for Blender users we even added a preset!
For a more detailed description of the listed changes, as well as an overview of the many other updates and bug fixes, please refer to the official 2022.1EA release notes. (https://cascadeur.com/help/release_notes/20221ea)
Are you curious to find out for yourself how Cascadeur's physics-based character animation can make your daily work as an animator more pleasant and effective?
Cascadeur 2022.1EA, with all new features and improvements mentioned above, is now available for download on cascadeur.com (https://cascadeur.com/download) . In addition to the still valid 50% early access price discount (https://cascadeur.com/plans) for commercial customers, Nekki also offers a completely free version "Cascadeur Basic" for private users, indies and students.
The full version of Cascadeur will be released in the 2nd half of 2022.
You only have until June 30, 2022 to secure the 50% Early Access discount for Cascadeur Pro and Business licenses.
As an Early Access customer, you will keep the 50% discount for an unlimited time even after the release of the full version.
As long as you do not cancel your subscription in the meantime, you will only have to pay 50% of the then valid license price - even in several years.
I am now in contemplation, on the one hand there is a desire to do everything on the free software, on the other hand is very tempting plushies paid version. Yes, and developers want to support, they offer a functional free version. Difficult choice, but there is time to think.
Has anyone else tried to sign up for their forum? I'm getting a reCAPTCHA error. I tried to use their "Contact Us" link, but it uses the same reCAPTCHA security and gives me the same error.
I tried bringing it to their attention on their facebook group, but the guy who's responding seems confused. Language barrier? I don't know. He asked me to share a screenshot, which I did, but he said he couldn't open it. He asked me to PM him, but there is no PM button (Messenger button) available on that group page, not even when I hover over the "user name."
I also tried three different browsers, all with the same result.
Cascadeur 2022.2EA improves AutoPosing, AutoPhysics, Secondary Motion and Quick Rigging!
Dear Cascadeur User
With Cascadeur version 2022.2EA (https://cascadeur.com/download) , today we are sending you the last planned feature update before the official release version. The new update focuses on improvements to Cascadeur's most popular AI tools: For example AutoPosing can now include the character's hip and neck in its pose predictions. In the AutoPhysics module, the Secondary Motion tool has been reworked from the ground up, and now runs much more stable than the previous version.
Among numerous other improvements, the AutoPhysics tool now also includes an option to keep global rotation of any body parts.
+++ Further highlights in Cascadeur 2022.2EA +++
Particularly for users of our Pro version, there is now also the possibility to customise the program layout, which has been requested by many users for a long time, in order to better adapt the user interface of Cascadeur to their own preferences.
Speaking of the Pro-Version: Since no further Early Access version will be released after version 2022.2EA, the 25% discount promotion is also coming to an end. So if you want to get a lifetime 25% discount on all future Cascadeur versions, you should definitely get it in our store (https://cascadeur.com/plans) before the release of the full version.
As with every major feature update, we have produced a teaser video with all highlights of today’s update:
As the Early Access period comes to an end with this update, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all Early Access users for their support over the past 3 years!
Over 100,000 participants have made Cascadeur’s Early Access period an exciting and eventful time for us. With the release of the full version, a new chapter in the life cycle of Cascadeur will soon begin, and we will see how well our product holds up in the highly competitive animation software market. Don't forget: With a Pro subscription (https://cascadeur.com/plans) you can actively support the further development of Cascadeur.
UPDATE 2022.2EA: New Features and Improvements
The release of Cascadeur's full version is getting closer and closer: according to our plans, it should be ready in Q4-2022! The recently released update 2022.2EA was therefore packed with new features that we really wanted to roll out before the official release, such as the AutoPosing tool extended by hip and neck points, a heavily revised and more stable Secondary Motion tool and a new interpolation option called "Global rotation". Particularly for users of our Pro version, there is now also the possibility to customize the UI layout. Our release notes (https://cascadeur.com/help/category/193) give you a complete overview of the numerous improvements.
If you haven't had the chance to try out the new version yet, you should definitely do so now! Before you do, take a look at the stream that our CTO Alexander Grishanin recorded last week. Alexander demonstrates in detail and with concrete examples how the new features can best be used productively.
Watch Alexander’s feature presentation on YouTube (
PERFORMANCE FIX: New Update to 2022.2.2EA
After the release of the last Early Access version on September 15, some users reported performance problems in the Viewport window. We immediately put our development team on the problem, and released an improved version the next day. Unfortunately, even this version 2202.2.1EA did not boost the performance as much as we hoped.
So we spent almost 2 weeks more intensively troubleshooting and were able to locate and eliminate the cause of the decreased FPS rate. Version 2022.2.2EA, released on October 6th, completely fixes the reported performance issues, and the Cascadeur viewport now runs as smooth as ever again! We recommend all users to download and install this latest version.
BLOG POST: AI in Animation https://cascadeur.com/blog/general/ai-in-animation
AI and machine learning have been the talk of the town for years. For game and movie animators in particular, the use of novel, intelligent tools promises a golden future: dull routine tasks can be completed by intelligent software in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost - so that the animator can devote himself fully to the artistic-creative side of his work.
But how far has the use of AI actually progressed in animation software today? In our latest blog article, our technical writer Fyodor Mastikhin shows what can be achieved with today’s software, and what challenges animation software developers are currently working on.
LIMITED OFFER: Get a lifetime 25% discount on Cascadeur Pro!
All users who upgrade to Cascadeur Pro before the official release will still receive a 25% discount on the license price - for the entire duration of their subscription! The discount is valid forever - as long as you don't cancel the subscription yourself!
Many thanks to all participants of our animation contest! It really wasn't easy for us to select what we thought were the most successful animations from all submissions. Nevertheless, our jury of developers and experienced game animators had to decide on three winners.
FOLLOW ME: Cascadeur on TikTok
Are you already following us on TikTok? Under the tag @cascadeur_3d we publish the most interesting video clips and animations there. Our topics range from funny memes, to insights into our ongoing projects, to animations with interesting physics experiments. As a regular TikTok user, you shouldn't miss our channel!
FOUNDER’S STREAM: Evgeny Dyabin
Evgeny Dyabin, is the mastermind who came up with the idea for Cascadeur over 10 years ago. Unfortunately, our company founder is not often seen in front of the camera - but recently he invited our users to a personal one-hour stream on our YouTube channel.
Of course, Evgeny talks about his favorite topic, which is physics-based character animation with Cascadeur. How its most important tools, AutoPosing and AutoPhysics, work in practice and how useful they are for animators of all skill levels. In this recorded stream, he also demonstrates some practical use cases and shows how you can quickly create an impressive animation using these AI tools.
Watch the stream of Cascadeur Founder Evgeny Dyabin (
Machine learning is a bit like a wonder bag: you never know exactly what you will get. Sometimes you're disappointed, but sometimes you're downright amazed about the good result. Our company founder Eugene recently had such a positive experience with Cascadeur's planned AutoPosing expansion for fingers and hands.
Starting with only 50 real human hand poses, we extrapolated ca. 50.000 natural looking poses and fed them into a neural network. The first visible test results of this finger AutoPosing function are still not perfect, but already so promising that we decided to officially introduce the function in Cascadeur as early as Q1-2023.
In the following video on Eugene's Twitter channel, you can get a first impression of the elegant aesthetics of this new tool, which will soon be available exclusively to Cascadeur Pro users.
Watch Cascadeur's Hands-AutoPosing in Action! ( )
SOCIAL MEDIA: New team member Max
We welcome our new colleague Max, but you may call him Rupreeht! Max is currently in charge of creating social media content for Cascadeur. If you've visited our TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@cascadeur_3d) or YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Cascadeur) in the last few days, you probably know his voice from our "Let's Cascadeur" mini-tutorial series.
Having been a CG artist for over a decade and having worked on commercials and indie movie productions, he aims to bring his expertise to make YouTube Shorts, TikToks and Tutorials both useful and fun. And, by the way, he is new to Twitch, streaming games and CG!
VFX BUNDLE: Cascadeur and OctaneRender Studio+ https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/purchase/
We're happy to announce a new collaboration with OTOY: Introduced just in time for Black Friday 2022, the VFX software collection "OctaneRender Studio+ 2023" now also includes the Pro version of our character animation software Cascadeur! The price currently offered in the OTOY store for the "Ultimate Black Friday Bundle" is unbeatable at $15.99 per month (with annual billing).
So if you've been waiting for a Black Friday special offer for Cascadeur Pro, don't hesitate to grab it now, as OTOY’s Back Friday deal is still available on their website, but only for a short time. There won't be another opportunity to get Cascadeur Pro in a high-quality software bundle so cheaply anytime soon.
In response to our call in the August newsletter, several hundred animators applied to take part in the closed beta test (CBT) of Cascadeur Mobile for iOS. We randomly selected and invited more than 250 of them to put the app’s first version through its paces. Over the last few weeks, we were busy evaluating the extensive and mostly positive feedback, and preparing for the next stage. So today we are happy to announce the additional features we plan to include next:
An improved timeline, which offers a more desktop-like user experience
Camera controls
Trajectories
Video references
As soon as the new beta version is nearing completion, we intend to start another beta test call. This will give you another chance to try Cascadeur Mobile before the official release!
BLOG POST: The Last Premiere https://cascadeur.com/blog/general/indie-spotlight-the-last-premiere
In the fifth episode of our Indie Spotlight series, the German development team CrystalMesh introduces you to their third-person action adventure game. Still in development, “The Last Premiere” has already successfully snagged one of the German government's highly competitive computer game funding slots.
We particularly liked the Cascadeur-created character animations of The Last Premiere. So we invited Linus, one of the founders of CrystalMesh, to present his exciting project in our blog - and also to explain why he chose Cascadeur over Blender and MoCap for his action-packed animations.
LAST CHANCE: Get a lifetime 25% discount on Cascadeur Pro!
All users who upgrade to Cascadeur Pro before the official release in December will still receive a 25% discount on the license price - for the entire duration of their subscription! The discount is valid forever - as long as you don't cancel the subscription yourself!
PIPELINE TUTORIALS: Blender and UE4
Game developers regularly ask us for step-by-step instructions on how to transfer animations from Cascadeur to other animation tools and engines, such as UE or Blender.
Our team has made these questions the subject of two new video tutorials.
In this very detailed half-hour course, we explain how to easily interchange animation between Cascadeur and the still very popular UE4 by using the UE retargeting system.
Tutorial: Cascadeur to UE4 - Custom Character Retargeting (
Our second animation pipeline tutorial shows how to properly import a character from Blender into Cascadeur and vice-versa export an animation from Cascadeur into Blender. Thanks to Cascadeur's convenient auto-rigging, the necessary know-how can be acquired in less than 3 minutes!
Tutorial: How to import from Blender to Cascadeur and backward (
It's done! We are excited to announce that the full version of our 3D character animation software Cascadeur is now available to download! (https://cascadeur.com/download)
The official release of Cascadeur is the culmination of almost three years of beta testing, in which over 100,000 professional and hobby animators from more than 50 different countries participated. It has been in development for well over 10 years.
We accompany today's product launch with two new videos. The brand new Tutorial Video ( teaches new users how to work with Cascadeur’s accelerated animation pipeline, while the following Product Demo Video ( is a 5-minute demonstration of the release version's main features and physics tools:
For most users, the entry into the world of AI-supported, physically accurate keyframe animation remains completely free: just like in the beta phase, individuals and indie developers with low sales revenues can simply download and use Cascadeur Basic, a comprehensive character animation package. Larger teams, on the other hand, can subscribe to Cascadeur Pro to gain access to additional functions, unlimited commercial use and responsive user support starting at $25 per month (https://cascadeur.com/plans) . Users who opt for a Pro subscription by December 31 will even receive a lifetime 25% discount on it.
For already registered users like you, today's release of version 2022.3 also represents a major update over the previously distributed Early Access version 2022.2.2EA. In addition to a thorough revision of the UX and UI, the two most important AI tools AutoPosing and AutoPhysics received the final touches:
+++ Highlights of release version 2022.3 +++
Optimised user interface for an easier and faster workflow
Improved AutoPosing with new spine controls and overall better behaviour
AutoPhysics now shows more realistic results in animations without jumps
Angular momentum smoothness completely reworked
Revised UX logic for AutoPhysics
.... plus many other improvements, such as stretched frames, manipulator sensitivity updates, better Clamped interpolation & weapons slots in the Quick Rigging Tool!
... read the full release notes here! (https://cascadeur.com/help/category/197)
Last but not least we are happy to announce our plans for the first months of 2023:
Besides the almost finished Hands AutoPosing ( tool, the further expansion of the AutoPosing and AutoPhysics tools are on the to-do list for the next updates. Also, more interaction of characters with the environment, a convenient control picker, and - in the medium term - a pose library.
Cascadeur News: Daz3D Export, Launch Review, 90-Day Trial Period
SUCCESSFUL START: Casacadeur's launch in figures
One month after the official release of Cascadeur, it is time to draw a first conclusion: in a few words, we are thrilled with the results! Since we owe the success of our animation software mainly to our users, we are happy to share the measured figures of the last 30 days with you:
After Cascadeur’s launch on 14 December …
the peak number of simultaneously active Cascadeur users quintupled from 200 to 1,000.
we recorded a day with more than 1,000 hours of total Cascadeur use for the first time.
we had a day where over 250 users worked with Cascadeur for more than 1 hour without a break for the first time.
the number of subscribers to our Youtube channel has grown to over 25,000.
the number of video views (within the last 30 days) on our Youtube channel has quadrupled from 25,000 to 100,000.
the most popular Twitter post by Cascadeur's inventor Eugene Dyabin (https://twitter.com/EugeneDyabin) has reached over 170,000 viewers.
CONTINUED FUNDING: Our plans for 2023https://twitter.com/EugeneDyabin/status/1596232700779982850These fantastic figures are also the best motivation for Nekki's company management to support Cascadeur’s further development in 2023 at full throttle. Although we are still a long way from being financially profitable with our software, Nekki's management has just decided to continue Cascadeur's funding without any cuts!
Nekki is convinced that the many features planned for 2023, such as Finger AutoPosing ( , control picker, support for Video Mocap, a (mobile) iOS and a MacOS version will quickly drive our software’s success further. One thing is certain: Cascadeur has come to stay!
MEDIA ECHO: Cascadeur’s launch in the news
The release of Cascadeur shortly before the turn of the year also received great response in the animation media and social networks. Many dedicated CG journalists, who had already accompanied Cascadeur's development since the closed beta version with news and videos, now also reported on the release of the full version.
UPDATED EULA: New 90-day trial period for Pro users
Users have pointed out to us that for medium and large companies our license agreement (“Cascadeur EULA V1.0”) to date doesn’t yet offer a legal possibility to try out Cascadeur before purchasing the Pro version. We are happy to fulfill this request and we therefore have amended our EULA in such a way that from now on all users can generally try out "Cascadeur Basic" free of charge for up to 90 days!
After this newly introduced 90-day-trial period, the previous EULA regulation still applies: Private individuals and indie developers may continue to use Cascadeur Basic free of charge, while companies with more than USD 100,000 in annual sales must upgrade to the "Cascadeur Pro" version.
NEW TUTORIAL: Export animation from Cascadeur to Daz3D
Many of our users would like to integrate Cascadeur into their proven software environment, but do not know how best to proceed. Recently, we have been devoting more time to this important topic and have therefore published various step-by-step tutorials for Blender, UE4 and Ready Player Me, among others.
Particularly often we receive enquiries about Daz3D, which is one of our users' favorite animation tools. Actually it is not difficult to export animations created in Cascadeur to Daz3D. However, mistakes can happen in the process, resulting in an incorrect import. Our new Youtube tutorial will teach you in just one minute the necessary know-how to transfer animations between Cascadeur and Daz3D smoothly. The required simple script for Daz3D is available for download below the video.
Learn how to export animation from Cascadeur to Daz3D in just 1 minute (
FINAL CHANCE: 25% Discount on Cascadeur Pro until 31 January
We've already pushed back the deadline several times, but this time we're serious: If you still want the 25% Early Adopter discount on Cascadeur Pro, you have to be quick!
We are offering the lifetime discount on our website only until 31 January 2023. “Lifetime discount” means: If you subscribe to Cascadeur Pro now, you will pay 25% less on the current and future price - as long as your subscription runs. Don't miss out on this (really!) final opportunity.
Cascadeur News: Tutorial Offensive, Review with 300k views, New Community Platform
LEARNING OFFENSIVE: Four new tutorial videos released in February
You asked us for more tutorials - and you shall get them! Following your requests, we completed a total of four new Cascadeur tutorials in February:
1 - Our video "Creating a Walk Cycle" is aimed at both beginners and experts. In this step-by-step tutorial we show you how easy and fast you can animate a perfect walk cycle with Cascadeur. We also discuss common issues of walk cycles and how to fix them. A must-see video for any animator working with humanoid characters in Cascadeur!
Learn how to create a walk cycle (
2 - Our second new video is aimed at users of the web-based character animation service Mixamo. This 8 minute step-by-step guide will teach you how to import and export 3D characters between Cascadeur and Mixamo.
Learn how to work with Mixamo characters (
3 - AccuRIG is a free new auto-rigging tool that many of our users are using to create characters. Importing and animating AccuRIG models in Cascadeur becomes a breeze with this video tutorial.
Learn how to work with AccuRIG (
4 - Did you know that with the help of constraints it is possible to create something like a root controller in Cascadeur? It just takes a couple of minutes, and working with Walk Cycles becomes even faster and more convenient with root controllers. Our tutorial shows the few steps to achieve it.
Learn how to create a convenient root controller (
Click on a thumbnail to start YouTube:
MISSING LINK: Where did the Cascadeur Forum go?
Many of you have been wondering what happened to the Cascadeur forum. Where the HTML forum used to be on our website, there is now only a link to Discord. What happened? Simple explanation: we decided to stop offering the forum on our website with immediate effect, and switch completely to Discord. It was a necessary step to handle the increasing communication with Cascadeur users.
During the Early Access stage of our software our users were spread over two different communities - the (less frequented) HTML forum and our (highly active) Discord channel. Your strong engagement in our Discord channel has shown us that we need to focus on this platform. Hence we cordially invite you to join our Discord, and we look forward to exciting chats and in-depth animation discussions! Numerous helpful Cascadeur team members and almost 5,000 active members - sometimes even more than 1,000 are online at the same time - are waiting there for you!
Join us on Cascadeur's Discord channel! (https://discord.com/invite/Ymwjhpn)
INSANE NUMBER: Cascadeur review with 300.000 views!
As a small development studio without a big marketing budget, we are always happy to come across new Youtube posts from users who have discovered Cascadeur and want to tell their followers about it. The number of Cascadeur videos you publish continues to grow every day, and sometimes we're surprised at how successful they are: In February, a Cascadeur review by YouTuber Smeaf broke all previous records!
Smeaf has built a community of over 85,000 YT followers with particularly entertaining Blender tutorials. His Cascadeur review is titled "This new AI animation software is insane" and has already been viewed over 300,000 times!
Representing the many other YouTubers among you who support us with videos, we would like to thank Smeaf for this great video! Even though we can't feature all Cascadeur videos in our newsletter, we assure you: every single one of your YT videos will be watched by us - and we are very grateful for your support!
Watch Smeaf’s edutaining Cascadeur review on YouTube (
FOLLOW ME: Twitter accounts of the Cascadeur makers
Are you already following the Twitter channels of our animation experts? Not only our founder and Cascadeur inventor Eugene Dyabin but also our 3D technical specialist Grigory Tsimbal and our tutorial author Elena Lanovaia regularly share exciting insights into the current Cascadeur development, useful tips and tricks and especially sensational Cascadeur animations on their Twitter channels!
Cascadeur News: Product Hunt, Mocap Tutorial, New Features in Development
PRODUCT HUNT: Cascadeur launch planned for April 11 https://www.producthunt.com/products/cascadeur
Do you already know Product Hunt? ProductHunt.com (https://www.producthunt.com/products/cascadeur) is an international platform where entrepreneurs share their new software, gadgets and business ideas. As soon as a new product has been introduced to the community by a "hunter", all users have the chance to give feedback on it and thus support the product. A new app that is positively received by the community even has the chance to be named Product of the Day. For small development teams, such a nomination usually means an invaluable boost in publicity.
Our plan is to launch Cascadeur on Product Hunt on April 11, too. We would be happy if you’d support the launch on this day. And if you share some honest feedback on the page it will be even better. This would give our animation software the chance to reach a higher level of awareness - even without having the marketing power of bigger companies. You can already visit our Product Hunt page today and use the Notify Me function to register for the launch day. By the way, we plan to reward your support with a 20% discount code for Cascadeur Pro, which we will post on our Product Hunt page on April 11.
STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL: Mocap cleaning and editing
It's done! It's done! Last week we released the most requested Cascadeur video tutorial ever. It's an in-depth step-by-step tutorial on the various ways and tools you can use to cleanup and edit your mocap animation in Cascadeur. We tried to cover the most common cases you may face working with mocap data, as well as give you an idea of the ways you can use Cascadeur's unique features and tools to get a desired result.
Our 30-minute tutorial guides you through the complete working process from A to Z , and explains how to deal with typical issues that usually arise when working with mocap data in Cascadeur, such as:
how to fix rapid twists and flicks in the elbows and knees
how to avoid hands penetrating the mesh
the correct use of AutoPosing and the Tween Machine to fix misplaced or sliding feet
manually setting the fulcrum area to improve the results of AutoPhysics
changing the timing and height of motion-captured jumps to achieve more spectacular - but still physically accurate - results, using Cascadeur’s ballistic trajectories.… and much more!
Learn how to work with mocap data in Cascadeur (
MOBILE GAMES AWARDS 2023: Cascadeur among the finalists https://www.mobilegamesawards.com/the-finalists-for-2023/
We've just been nominated as a finalist in two categories at pocketgamer.biz's Mobile Games Awards 2023! Cascadeur is up against strong competition in the "Most Promising AI Games Tech" category, and our company Nekki is up for grabs as a developer in the "Best Tools Provider" category. Would you like to vote for one of the finalists?
Then you are welcome to do so under the following link. By the way: Only employees of the games industry are allowed to vote.
The work on the first feature update after the release of Cascadeur is currently in full swing. We can't give you a release date yet, but we were able to get a list of the planned new features and improvements from the development team:
1 - Finger AutoPosing.
It's an analogy to our autoposing system, and also a favorite feature of Cascadeur inventor Eugene Dyabin ( . With the help of an intelligent IK rig, expressive finger poses can be set conveniently and quickly.
2 - Control picker
A frequently requested feature that allows the creation of buttons and the assignment of object selection to these buttons. These buttons are positioned to represent the character rig in 2D and they are especially useful for more complex rigs or scenes.
3 - Reworked compensation motion tool
Previously introduced in a beta version, this tool can be used much easier now, without having to deal with a lot of parameters. The compensating motions of a character’s individual limbs and body will actually behave much smarter with our rework.
4 - Fulcrum motion cleaning tool
It removes unwanted foot sliding, and cleans foot rotation. The tool can be used to improve feet animation between frames after using autoposing or with dense animation data, e.g. from mocap.
5 … and speaking of mocap
In the next update we will also add the alpha version of our own video-mocap system. It's not very stable yet, but it's compatible with AutoPosing and adds additional convenience when working with a reference!
The release date of the next update is not set yet, but we will inform you as usual with an eMail on the day of the release!
NODE EDITOR TUTORIAL: Creating an Eye Controller
Cascadeur's Node Editor was introduced last year with version 2022.1EA. It is a versatile tool that allows advanced animators to access the inner structure of character rigs and fully customize them. However the tool can be challenging to use - even for experienced users. Although our online documentation contains a separate chapter on the Node Editor (https://cascadeur.com/help/tools/animation_tools/node_editor) , it does not explain more than the basic functions.
Many of you have wished for more detailed instructions and exemplary use cases for the Node Editor. With our new expert tutorial "Creating an Eye Controller", we address this demand using a concrete exemplary task: you can learn step-by-step how to create an eye controller that follows the direction of the eyes - as well as the movement of the head.
What do you think of this kind of expert-level videos? Would you like to see more of them? Or are they still too complicated? We look forward to your feedback in the comments section of the video!
Learn how to create an Eye Controller in Cascadeur (
Cascadeur News: Product of the Week, AutoPosing AI explained, MGA 2023 Nominations
On April 11 we officially unveiled Cascadeur on Product Hunt.
PRODUCT HUNT: Cascadeur named “Product of the Week” https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cascadeur
It was such a thriller on the technology review platform producthunt.com on April 11!
On this day we officially unveiled Cascadeur to the Product Hunt community - and a neck-and-neck race developed between Nekki's AI animation software and its contenders. In the late evening, however, Cascadeur was able to prevail over the other apps presented there and finally won the 'Product of the Day' award by a narrow margin of votes.
But the competition on producthunt.com was far from over after 24 hours: Over the course of the week, Cascadeur received so much support from Product Hunt and Cascadeur users that our animation software also secured the title of 'Product of the Week'. And the competition still remains exciting, as Cascadeur is now competing for the title of "Product of the Month".
See spectacular action animations in our Product Hunt launch trailer! <<
MGA 2023: Cascadeur nominated as “most promising AI tech”
Organized by Pocket Gamer UK, the Mobile Games Award (MGA) is now in its 6th year.
Cascadeur’s beta version has already been nominated as a finalist in the 2020 “Most Promising Games Technology” category three years ago. This year the full version was once again in the running for the coveted MGA award. Cascadeur got selected as a finalist in the newly created 'Most Promising AI Games Tech' category, up against strong competition from the likes of ChatGPT and Midjourney.
Our development team also received a separate nomination: Nekki is a finalist in the "Best Tools Provider" category, along with 7 other renowned software companies. We were delighted to be nominated twice - even if it wasn't quite enough to win in the end. Congratulations to the two winners, Unity (Best Tools Provider) and Solsten (AI Tech)!
NEURAL NETWORKS: How AI-Assistance works in Cascadeurhttps://80.lv/articles/ai-assistance-in-3d-character-posing-how-it-works-in-cascadeur/
AutoPosing and AutoPhysics are the two most popular and used features of Cascadeur. As if by magic, the software improves your animations (AutoPhysics) or places all the body parts of a character so that the pose looks completely natural and physically accurate (AutoPosing). But how does the artificial intelligence behind this powerful tool work?
In a recently published article on 80.lv, our co-founder Eugene Dyabin uses AutoPosing as an example to explain how he and his team have managed to simplify the previously tedious process of character posing to an intuitive work step with just a few active controllers. The article is certainly not addressed to beginners, but is well worth reading for animators interested in Machine Learning and Neural Networks.
However, as AI and machine learning are the hottest topics in the media at the moment, they are also covered in this interview: Eugene shares with the readers his personal view on the further development of this booming sector - and what he expects in the framework of AI technologies until the end of the year.
With Cascadeur 2023.1, Nekki today rolls out the first update of its AI-powered 3D animation software.
Dear Cascadeur User
With Cascadeur 2023.1, Nekki today rolls out the first update of its AI-powered 3D animation software. The long wait for the update was due to many new features the developers had in the works: The list of improvements includes killer features like Finger AutoPosing and Video MoCap. In addition, the Mac community has been heard, and for the first time, Nekki releases a dedicated version for Apple computers with ARM chips (such as M1 or M2).
As you can see in the release trailer above the most spectacular feature of Cascadeur 2023.1 is undoubtedly the new Finger AutoPosing. Analogous to the AutoPosing for humanoid characters, which simplifies the body posing process considerably, the character's fingers are now also equipped with AutoPosing controllers: When the user changes the position of a finger, Cascadeur's advanced AI adjusts the entire hand to make the pose look natural and realistic. Important note: Finger AutoPosing is only available in "Cascadeur Pro", which you can subscribe to starting at $25 per month (https://cascadeur.com/plans) .
Here is today's second big news: With Cascadeur 2023.1, we are releasing the beta of a MacOS version as an alternative to the Windows and Linux builds. All users can download the Mac beta version as an additional variant on our download page (https://cascadeur.com/download) . No new registration or additional fees are required. Cascadeur for Mac requires an ARM CPU, like M1 or M2.
Video MoCap is the third brand-new feature introduced in Cascadeur 2023.1. Now you can import images and videos and have Cascadeur automatically detect poses on them and apply them to your character. As you can see in the animation below, the first alpha version of the new Video MoCap already achieves pretty good results. However, we must point out that the MoCap feature is still in the early stages of development, and performance is still very slow. But don't worry; we will increase the capture speed in future versions.
Last but not least, with the new Control Picker, we now extend Cascadeur's UI by a special panel to quickly select different parts of the character's rig: limbs, head, body, and so on. Customizable buttons give you more convenient access to groups of controllers instead of having to select them one by one in the viewport window.
+++ Massive UI changes in Cascadeur 2023.1 +++
Reworked design for buttons controlling Animation Tracks and Ballistic Trajectories.
Timeline settings are duplicated in the Scene Settings panel and can be edited there.
We added a hotkey to select the entire Timeline.
The Track Stretching mode can now be toggled on and off with a dedicated button on the Timeline.
The timer on the Timeline can now be disabled.
You can now enable outlines for Ghosts, making them easier to distinguish.
The yellow border used to move frames on the Timeline now displays keyframes.
The Grounder now shows the center of mass projection on the floor
You can now copy and paste colors without opening the Color Selection Panel.
Finally, you can now save your current workspace using a dedicated option.
In addition to the main features already listed above, we've made tweaks to almost every part of Cascadeur, such as a new shortcut for quickly selecting all AutoPosing controllers, improved Clamp Interpolation, new Compensation Motion functionality, a new Animation Cycle Mode, and more intuitive Camera Controls.
Get the latest news about Cascadeur AI animation software for May 2023.
NEW TUTORIAL: Cascadeur 2023.1 for beginners
Time is on the move and everything is in a constant state of flux. This is especially true for Cascadeur, because with every new version we release, the user experience of our animation software evolves bit by bit. Update 2023.1 has brought an extraordinary amount of changes, especially to the user interface (UI). Because of this, some of our older tutorials, which are based on Cascadeur's earlier UI, can be difficult to understand for beginners.
Therefore, we felt it necessary to create a brand new beginner's tutorial based on Cascadeur 2023.1. The result is a very instructive 15-minute tutorial video in which you can learn how to produce your first animation with Cascadeur in a few minutes without any animation experience. Have fun watching it!
Learn how to get started with Cascadeur 2023.1 (
WORK IN PROGRESS: Mini-Update 2023.1.1 to be released soon
Thanks for all the feedback on the recently released version 2023.1! Besides the many positive comments, you also reported some bugs. Work on Cascadeur 2023.1.1 has already begun, and we will be releasing the update in the next few weeks - but definitely before the June newsletter. Here is the list of fixes we are currently working on. If you are affected by any of these issues, just sit back and wait for the update. And if you find any additional bugs, please report them as usual to our discord channel (https://discord.com/invite/Ymwjhpn)
Planned fixes in the next update:
Improving the Finger AutoPosing tool (Overall improvement, Better behavior in fist-like poses, Fix for interpolation frames editing)
Solving the issues with fulcrum groups creation when mirroring rig elements in rigging tool
Enabling the opening of scenes in Cascadeur directly from the File Explorer
Fixing occasional problems with the "Sync License" button.
QUICK POLL: Your favorite animation and CG YouTubers
As a small development team with an even smaller budget, it is not yet possible for us to launch advertising campaigns. Nevertheless, it is clear that Cascadeur will not be able to survive the tough competition in the animation software market without a little bit of PR and advertising.
So we decided to actively involve our community in the decision making process: We want to get in touch with popular animation and CG influencers and ask them to try out Cascadeur. By that, we hope that other YouTubers will follow the example of Smeaf ( and AskNK ( , two well-known influencers who have already introduced Cascadeur to their viewers. Thanks for your help!
INDIE SPOTLIGHT: Creating my dream gamehttps://cascadeur.com/blog/general/indie-spotlight-forninja-animating-my-dream-game-with-cascadeurEver since he was a teenager, Daniil Lyubimov has dreamed of creating his own fighting game. An autodidact, he first tried to learn the art of game development through online courses and free YouTube tutorials. Although he was eager to learn and highly motivated, he quickly realized that Blender and Maya were too complicated and extensive for his purposes. He became frustrated and almost gave up on his plans.
But then he discovered Cascadeur. It's flat learning curve and ease of use encouraged him not to give up. Finally, with the help of Cascadeur and the Unreal Engine, he was able to start developing his very own fighting game. To encourage other young indie game developers, he wrote down his inspiring story for our blog.
FOLLOW ME: Cascadeur inventor Eugene Dyabin on Twitter
https://twitter.com/EugeneDyabinAre you already following Cascadeur's creator Eugene Dyabin on Twitter? If you really want to keep up with the development of Cascadeur, then you should! While our official Twitter channel is the best place to find official news about Cascadeur, our company's founder also uses his private Twitter account to share secret development details, useful tips and tricks, and spectacular animations. If you follow these two Twitter accounts, you won't miss any Cascadeur news in the future!
Get the latest news about Cascadeur AI animation software for July 2023!
CALM DOWN: Making a Graceful Tai Chi Animation
For this new video tutorial, two great minds have combined their experience and expertise: Team Cascadeur technical animator Gigory Tsimbal created an animation of a particularly graceful Tai Chi movement sequence. His friend Alexey Silantiev, senior animator at Shadow Fight developer Banzai Games, then reviewed and improved the result.
Focusing on blocking (setting up precise poses) and spacing (working with keys, interpolation and timing), this new tutorial is not only a visual treat, but also an instructive lesson for animators of all experience levels. As always, Max Makishi, the "voice of Cascadeur", guides you through this Zen-like experience with his soothing timbre.
Want to see more extraordinary videos like this? Let us know what you think by email (mailto:info@cascadeur.com) or as a comment on YouTube. If the video gets a lot of positive feedback from you, we will be happy to produce more tutorials of this kind.
Watch our animator making a Tai Chi animation (
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Patch 2023.1.1 released!
Thanks to your active participation in debugging, we were able to release patch 2023.1.1 in the last week of June. This patch fixes the known issues in version 2023.1 and improves the stability of two recently introduced features: Finger AutoPosing and Video Mocap.
Here is a list of the most important fixes:
Improved stability for Finger AutoPosing, especially in fist and extended poses
Improved spine stability for AutoPosing.
Improved interpolation performance.
Improved stability for Video Mocap: the tool now simply skips frames it can't detect.
Cascadeur scenes can now be opened directly from File Explorer.
The MacOS version now loads Quick Rigging Tool default templates correctly.
Fixed occasional problems with the Sync License button.
Fixed problems loading scenes from folders with non-Latin letters
HURRY UP: 3D-CG-Guru's Speedrun Tutorialhttps://youtu.be/5jBcOJkvarY
The following tutorial is quite a contrast to our relaxed Tai Chi video above. Under the promising title "Cascadeur SPEEDRUN", CG pro Nathaniel Albright (a.k.a. "3D CG Guru") has set himself the goal of introducing advanced animators to Cascadeur as quickly and directly as possible. In just 30 minutes, Nathaniel introduces you to the most important basic functions of Cascadeur, i.e. the transformation tools, posing, working with the timeline and interval edit mode, and how to use the trajectory tools.
Our team really enjoyed watching the first part of this new series and we hope that 3D CG Guru will deliver more parts of his tutorial soon. Since his Youtube channel is still brand new, please use the subscribe button to support Nathaniel and let him know that you enjoyed the content.
Watch the 1st part of 3D CG Guru’s Cascadeur Tutorial (
COMMUNITY SURVEY: We want your opinion!
With the release version of Cascadeur we showed what we think the ideal keyframe character animation software should be. And with the update 2023.1 we have shown in which direction Cascadeur could develop: Video MoCap, FingerAutoPosing, Mac version... and an even more intuitive user interface.
Now we want to know from you how satisfied you are with the current version. Are there any tools or features you have problems with? What features would you most like to see in future releases? And how satisfied are you with the overall experience of using Cascadeur?
FOLLOW ME: Cascadeur inventor Eugene Dyabin on Twitter
https://twitter.com/EugeneDyabinAre you already following Cascadeur's creator Eugene Dyabin on Twitter? If you really want to keep up with the development of Cascadeur, then you should! While our official Twitter channel is the best place to find official news about Cascadeur, our company's founder also uses his private Twitter account to share secret development details, useful tips and tricks, and spectacular animations. If you follow these two Twitter accounts, you won't miss any Cascadeur news in the future!
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