LogInThe long-awaited update for Nekki's Cascadeur is out now, introducing a suite of revolutionary tools designed to empower animators, including support for animation retargeting and a new Animation Unbaking system for processing mocap data.
Last month, Nekki previewed a major update for Cascadeur, the AI-assisted animation app, promising to turn it into a powerful tool not only for making animation but also for editing, and finally, it's here.
With this update, you receive a set of tools that allow you to make changes to any baked animation where each frame is a keyframe, like asset stores animation or mocap. Cascadeur 2024.1 also introduces the Retargeting tool which works as a simple copy and paste, and enhanced AutoPhysics system which now allows the character to interact with the environment.
Animation Unbaking, the highlight of this update, is a tool that greatly simplifies the process of turning any baked animation into an editable one. Basically, it automatically converts imported unfiltered animation data such as mocap into a set of keyframes and interpolations, making it so much easier to edit.
According to developers, Animation Unbaking consists of three steps that you can initiate separately if you wish to:
- Placing the keyframes based on the Fulcrum Points. This is a preparation stage where you can ensure that the Fulcrum intervals are determined correctly
- Choosing interpolation and placing additional keyframes. It will pick the best interpolation method, choose IK or FK for the intervals, and place additional keyframes to keep the animation close to the original
- Adjusting the AutoPosing rig. Lock the crucial points to leave the rest to AutoPosing, which now also smoothes the noise and jitters in the animation
Nekki says, that in most cases, it will be enough to press a single button to initiate all the steps automatically, although if you need more control over the result, you can do the steps manually one by one. In the end, you get a fully editable keyframe animation as if it was made from zero in Cascadeur.
"Say, you have a baked animation that you've downloaded from some asset library. Once imported to Cascadeur, you can retarget it to your character, use Animation Unbaking to turn it into a set of keyframes, which in turn will allow you to edit the poses, change the timing, etc. Same as you would with any keyframe animation, like in this example here, we increased the height of the jump and adjusted the pose.
Then turn on AutoPhysics to bring everything together and make the changes physically accurate. And, by adjusting a few sliders, you can add extra physics attributes like secondary motion, to bring back subtle details which may have been otherwise lost during the unbaking process."
Moving on to another Cascadeur 2024.1's prominent feature, Animation Retargeting has been simplified to a copy-paste operation and works well with humanoid characters of different proportions. It is based on the AutoPosing rig which can be automatically created using the Quick Rigging Tool.
Finally, AutoPhysics has received a "massive upgrade", allowing the character to interact with the environment in different ways: climb stairs, do parkour tricks, and even interact with moving objects. What's cool is that all the AutoPhysics settings are now controlled with only 4 sliders:
- Smooth trajectory. Smoothes the trajectory of the center of mass
- Smooth rotation. Affects the general rotation of the character to make it more inertial
- Compensation motion. Allows the character to use limbs to aid the movement
- Secondary motion. Allows to create overlaps, shakes, and bounces to the body parts
Other updates include an enhanced AutoPosing function, which gets additional controllers for more precise pose generation and weapons and other props support. There's also an option to detach a Viewport window now, which comes in handy if you work with multiple monitors.
Image Credits: Nekki, Cascadeur
Nekki has also announced a new pricing and licensing structure in order to ensure that animators at all levels have access to Cascadeur at a price that suits their needs:
Now, the free version of the software is available to anyone but isn't suitable for commercial use and exports to .casc format exclusively.
Cascadeur Indie comes at $99/year and expands on the Free features by adding unrestricted animation exports to .fbx and .dae but the studio's revenue must be less than $100k/year.
Finally, Cascadeur Pro is $399/year or $49/month and delivers the ultimate toolkit for professional animators with no restrictions at all.
Learn more about Cascadeur 2024.1 in the release notes here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.