General
Cascadeur’s release version is now available!

We are excited to announce that the full version of our 3D character animation software Cascadeur is now available to downloadThe 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.

With Cascadeur's launch, Nekki empowers both game and movie animators to create physically accurate animations much easier and faster. Never before making animation from scratch or editing existing ones has been so easy and fun.Thanks to its AI-assisted tools, creators can make key character poses really fast, instantly see physically accurate results and adjust secondary motion. All while retaining full control over their animation at any point!

Nekki accompanies today's product launch with two new videos. The Product Demo Video is a 5-minute demonstration of Cascadeur's main features and physics tools, while the Tutorial Video teaches new users how to work with Cascadeur's accelerated animation pipeline.



Even as a newly released software, Cascadeur is already a widely successful production tool: Nekki's in-house action game series Shadow Fight owes its cult status among nearly 500 million gamers not least due to its smooth and realistic fighting animations. Also, the great interest from the game and VFX industry and the very positive user feedback during the beta and early access phase makes us confident that Cascadeur will soon be counted among the must-have tools for 3D animation.

For most users, the entry into the world of AI-supported, physically accurate keyframe animation is completely free: Individuals and indie developers with low sales revenues can simply download Cascadeur Basic, a comprehensive character animation package, directly from cascadeur.com.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.  Users who opt for a Pro subscription by December 31 will even receive a lifetime 25% discount on it.

Today's release 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:

  • Optimized user interface for an easier and faster workflow
  • Improved AutoPosing with new spine controls and overall better behavior
  • 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!

Firstly available for Windows and Linux desktop systems, Cascadeur requires only a medium hardware configuration and can thus even be used productively on modern laptops. The team will also start developing a Mac version soon, but a specific release date has not been announced yet.

Last but not least we are happy to announce the plans for Cascadeur in 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 2023.1 introduces Finger AutoPosing, Video MoCap, and macOS version
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).
Indie Spotlight: ForNinja - Animating my dream game with Cascadeur
Hello everyone, my name is Daniil Lyubimov and I've always dreamed of making games. It all started with me buying courses on game development on Unreal Engine. But the training didn't go the way I had planned and I had to figure it all out on my own with tutorials from YouTube. And so, having gained some experience and knowledge, I suddenly felt that I could make something of my own.
AI-Assistance in Character Posing: How It Works in Cascadeur
Nekki's Eugene Dyabin, Aina Chirkova, and Max Tarasov share a comprehensive overview of Cascadeur's AI-powered AutoPosing tool
Indie Spotlight: The Last Premiere
In our latest Indie Spotlight, the German game developers from CrystalMesh present their debut game "The Last Premiere". The dark mystery detective game not only convinces with a fantastic background story, but also with a fast-paced melee combat system. Our animation tool Cascadeur is used for the character animations, of course!
Cascadeur 2022.2EA improves AutoPosing, AutoPhysics, Secondary Motion and Quick Rigging!
With Cascadeur version 2022.2EA, we are releasing the last planned feature update before the official release version. The new update focuses on improvements to Cascadeur's most popular AI tools:
AI in Animation
Animators have always sought for ways to simplify the process of creating animation, to make it faster and more efficient, but not by sacrificing quality and artistry. In this blog post, we take a look at the current state of the art: To what extent can artificial intelligence already support us in the creation of character animations today?
How to Create Avatars for Cascadeur Online (Fast)
Probably one of the easiest and fastest ways to create a 3D avatar for a wide variety of purposes is “Ready Player Me”. Wolf3D's amazing character creation technology is able to generate stylish 3D avatars using just a single 2D photo. You can export these avatars to social apps, chat apps, for game development in Unity3D and UE - and also for animation in Cascadeur.
Indie Project Spotlight: Silkroad
Recently, the indie game Silkroad caught our eye, which our Discord community member Guedin is currently developing. Although Silkroad is a one-man private project, its YouTube channel already has almost 30,000 subscribers. The animation results that Guedin has shared in our Discord community over the last few weeks are absolutely worth watching, and therefore we asked the young developer to present his game for our blog.
New learning materials, tutorials and streams
We have added another chapter to the interactive tutorials on our website: Physics! In 7 interactive lessons you will learn everything you need to know about how to use Cascadeur's various physics tools, and how to make the most of them. In the approx. 2-hour course, our animator Elena will guide you from the simplest basics of physics-based animation to complex topics like motion compensation and secondary animation.
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