1. Select an interval on the Timeline:

This interval should include at least two keyframes.The distance between these keyframes should not be longer than 88 frames (but the interval itself can have arbitrary length).

2. Click the Inbetweening button on the Toolbar:

After this, the tool will generate an animation based on the keyframes on the selected interval.

How It Works

Unlike Interpolation, Inbetweening is an intellectual tool: it automatically generates new poses between the keyframes.
Animations produced by this tool take into account human body mechanics, as it was trained on a large amount of motion capture data.

All these animations were made and prepared by our team specifically for this task.
Generation itself is performed locally, on your computer. No remote servers are involved.
Animation generated by Inbetweening produces frames with the Fixed type of interpolation: essentially a sequence of standalone frames with each frame containing a pose.

The keyframes you selected, however, are preserved with no changes.

How to Use It

Although Inbetweening generates poses automatically, you have a lot of options to influence the result and make it as close to your idea as it is possible.

The motion is generated to fully coincide with keyframed poses.
This means that by changing these poses, you can alter the motion that results from them.

The motion is also greatly influenced by the timing and the distance between keyframes.

By moving the key on the Timeline - and by moving the character in the scene itself - you can get different types of motion even out of the same key poses. For example, when the distance is long and frames are few, the character will move faster.
You can also work in an iterative manner: by adding new keys based on the generated poses, making changes to them and re-generating the motion.

The motion produced by Inbetweening is not always physically accurate. So a good choice would be to use it in combination with Physical Assistant and other physics-based tools.

Unbaking

And if you’d like to further edit the generated animation manually, we’d recommend to use Animation Unbaking on it.

To use Unbaking, you’ll first need to make sure that all the Fulcrum Points are recognized correctly. (link to the page about fulcrum points?)
If a point is not recognized as a fulcrum when it should be:

1. Select it.

2. Enable the Apply on selected interval option at tyhe top of the Object Properties panel:

3. Increase the Fulcrum Point settings (such as Max Speed and Collision Radius) until the point is considered fulcrum by the algorithm:

You can also apply Fulcrum Motion Cleaning to the unbaked animation if it shows sliding.

4. Once these issues are taken care of, you can click the Animation Unbaking button on the Toolbar:

This will produce a normal Cascadeur animation with interpolation intervals etc.
Doing so would preserve all of the initial keyframes, so don’t worry about losing any part of your initial setup.

Settings

Style

The Style option controls the kind of motion (like walking or running) generated by the tool.
This option is available on the Scene Settings panel, under the Inbetweening tab:

Note

This option is more of a recommendation than an outright order. It influences the kind of motion the tool would produce, but doesn't strictly dictate it.
For better control over the results, you should include as many keyframes with the key poses as necessary to define the character's actions.

Fulcrum Motion Cleaning

Inbetweening also has an option to apply Fulcrum Motion Cleaning to the animation it produces.
To make use of this feature, enable the Use Fulcrum Motion Cleaning option on the side of the Inbetweening button on the Toolbar:

Once it is enabled, Fulcrum Motion Cleaning will be automatically applied to the animation produced by Inbetweening.

This option differs from the regular Fulcrum Motion Cleaning in that it doesn’t change the keyframe composition on the Timeline.

Limitations

When you work with Inbetweening, keep in mind that currently it has some limitations:

● It only works for humanoid characters.

● It requires a standard Cascadeur rig that supports AutoPosing (such a rig can be easily made with the Quick Rigging Tool)

● Currently, the tool is not capable of recognizing some kinds of motions; we plan to expand the library in the future.

● In the current version, Inbetweening works separately from physics tools. Because of this, animations produced by it might not be physically accurate.

Was this article useful to you?