FAQ

Cascadeur is a 3D animation software with AI-assisted posing and physics tools.

Cascadeur is suitable for all - from individual indie developers to big studios. The AI-assisted posing tools are great for speeding up the animation process, while the physics tools are usable for bringing physical realism to your animations.

Cascadeur has a special set of tools to simplify the creation of body mechanic animations.

1. The Autoposing tool allows for the faster creation of more natural poses.

2. Set of physics tools that can adjust character balance, calculate ballistic trajectories, add secondary motion, and more.

3. Special control rig structure that greatly simplifies the process of rigging and animating the character.
Cascadeur’s control rig also doesn’t use the Euler angles for calculating rotations, which saves the user from the infamous “gimbal lock” problem.

4. Viewport-centric design that allows the user to animate and modify animation without needing to use the Graph Editor.

All of these greatly improve the animation process for the animator, who can get good results even if they’re a complete beginner.

Cascadeur and its tools have been designed to lower the learning curve for its users, so producing and altering animations should be easier compared to other software. But as with every other craft, you’ll need to spend time learning how to do it, from the basics to the advanced.

Unlike other AI solutions that can produce a complete piece of content with little to no user input, Cascadeur is an AI-assisted software, with an emphasis on assistance.

Cascadeur’s physics and posing tools will try their best to help you produce good-looking poses and physically accurate animation, but they will not do everything for you. You will have to make conscious decisions while making or modifying your animation, whether about polishing the animation or tuning the tool’s settings and values.

For a long time, Cascadeur was our in-house project. Over the years, we’ve used Cascadeur for our games such as:

• Vector 1 and 2
• Shadow Fight
• Shadow Fight 2
• Shadow Fight 3
• Shadow Fight Arena

Right now, Nekki is developing a single-player gun-fu action game SPINE with the help of Cascadeur.

Cascadeur supports third-party software through standard FBX, Collada and USD formats.

See Import FBX/DAE and Export FBX/DAE to learn more about file formats.

While Cascadeur’s “specialization” is the animation of humanoid characters, you can still rig and animate non-humanoid characters.
Please note that currently the user is expected to use the Point Controller mode for animating the non-humanoid characters since the Autoposing tool can only be used with the humanoid characters.

Currently, you can only create control rigs for your models. The model has to have a skinned skeleton before you import it into Cascadeur, so the skeleton creation and skinning have to be done in another software that supports it.

It’s possible, but the tool use is limited compared to other software. For example, the use of the “squash and stretch” technique is limited to stretching the character’s body parts by pulling them further apart.

The gameplay animations are the main focus of Cascadeur, but it’s possible to animate cinematic content.
Please note that Cascadeur doesn’t currently have dedicated tools for creating facial animations. Making the renders “pretty” also has to be done in another software, since Cascadeur offers very basic functionality for video rendering.

At the moment, we’re only able to focus on providing support in English. Maintaining the interfaces and documentation, as well as providing support in multiple languages would require additional resources and manpower, which currently the team doesn’t quite have.

There’s a public Trello board with the roadmap.

If you have previously signed up using the “Continue with Gmail/Facebook” button, then your Cascadeur account is using the Gmail/Facebook token for logging in. Press the same “Continue with Gmail/Facebook” button on the “Sign In” screen to log into your Cascadeur account.
If you have signed up using the regular email and password and can’t log in, press the “Forgot your password?” button and follow the instructions.

Yes, you can. After pressing the “Continue with Gmail/Facebook” button, you’ll be prompted to choose the Gmail account to continue to cascadeur.com with.

To switch to another Cascadeur account, go through these steps:
1) Log out of your current account on the cascadeur.com website and log into the other account.
2) Launch Cascadeur. Log out of your current account in the software by going to the Home screen (click on the little house icon in the top left corner of the screen) and pressing the round icon next to the gear icon, then pressing Log Out.
3) Log into Cascadeur software again - this time, you should be logged into the account that you're logged in on the website.

Please write to support@cascadeur.com - we’ll delete it per your request.

If you’re not signed in, go to the “Sign in” page by clicking the Profile button in the top right corner of the main page at cascadeur.com. There, press the “Forgot your password?” button and follow the instructions.
If you’re signed in, log out of your Cascadeur account by clicking the Profile button in the top right corner of the main page at cascadeur.com and pressing Log Out. After that, press the Profile button again and scroll down to find the “Forgot your password?” button. Press it and follow the instructions.

This happens because you’re logged into your Cascadeur account. Press the “Logout” button in the top right corner of the main page to log out of your account. After that, the link should be redirecting you to the Password Reset page.

Enter your Cascadeur profile by clicking the Profile button in the top right corner of the main page at cascadeur.com. There, scroll down to find the “Change e-mail address” input field. Change the email address to the one you need and press “Save”.

Yes, you can switch from using Google Sign In to the regular login-password combination. You will need to go through the following steps:
1) Log out of your Cascadeur account on the main website, then press the Profile button.
2) Below the Sign In input fields, press the "Forgot your password?" button.
3) Input the email address of the Google account you've been using to log into your Cascadeur account and press "Restore password".
4) Open the sent email and go through the link in it
5) Input new password
After these steps, you should be able to use the login-password combination to sign into your Cascadeur account.

Cascadeur does have an offline activation.
To access it, please write to sales@cascadeur.com to request the offline activation to be turned on on your Cascadeur account. Please note that Cascadeur reserves the right to deny turning on the Offline activation on your account.

Enter your Cascadeur profile by clicking the Profile button in the top right corner of the main page at cascadeur.com. Switch to the “Subscriptions and Billings” tab.
There, you should find the expiration date of your subscription plan

To share your purchased licenses with the other Cascadeur accounts, enter your Cascadeur profile by clicking the Profile button in the top right corner of the main page at cascadeur.com
There, switch to the “Administration” tab (visible only if you have purchased 2+ licenses. On the License Management page, you can attach and remove licenses on other people's Cascadeur accounts.

When purchasing multiple licenses, they are not being attached to the "admin" account by default. If you want the admin account to use one of the purchased licenses, you will need to share it with your own account.
To share your purchased licenses, enter your Cascadeur profile by clicking the Profile button in the top right corner of the main page at cascadeur.com
There, switch to the “Administration” tab. On the License Management page, you can attach the license to your Cascadeur account's email address.

Transferring the license to other accounts isn’t possible. Please write to support@cascadeur.com, so we can find a solution to the problem.

The subscription plan gets activated once you sync your license in the Cascadeur software via the command at Help -> Sync license

If the command doesn't work, please go through the following steps:
1) Log out of your account at www.cascadeur.com
2) Log out of your account in the Cascadeur software by going to the Home screen (click on the little house icon in the top left corner of the screen) and pressing the round icon next to the gear icon, then pressing Log Out
3) Log into your account at www.cascadeur.com
4) Log into your account in the Cascadeur software
5) Sync license in the menu Help -> Sync license
6) Check your license status in the menu Help -> About -> Cascadeur

You can install Cascadeur on up to 3 devices per license.
However, the license is not transferable to other persons, companies or institutions. By accepting our EULA, you agree not to pass the software on to third parties. For an EULA-conform use of the free version, every user must register on www.cascadeur.com and create their own user account.

You can manage your license and your registered devices in your user profile on our website. In the event of problems with device management, please write to support@cascadeur.com.

You can install Cascadeur on up to 3 devices per license. If you have exceeded the number of installs for your account, please write to support@cascadeur.com to deactivate the hardware registered on to your account.

Nekki sells all Cascadeur licenses exclusively via our authorized global distributor Xsolla. Xsolla automatically sends a payment confirmation after the purchase of a license.
If you have any further questions about payment confirmations or invoices, please contact Xsolla support at https://account.xsolla.com/ or by writing to support@xsolla.com

Please write to support@cascadeur.com to request a formal quote.

To put it shortly:

Free plan:
- 1 user.
- Export available in only the proprietary .casc scene format.
- Some tools and features are unavailable.
- Commercial use is prohibited

Indie plan:
- 1-3 licenses can be purchased on a single account
- Export available in the FBX, DAE, USD formats, as well as the proprietary .casc scene format.
- Some tools - Animation Retargeting, Scene Linking and Environment Interaction in AutoPhysics - are unavailable.
- Commercial use is restricted for users with a gross revenue of up to 100.000USD/year.
- Once the Indie plan runs out, you get reverted to the Free plan, unless you renew it.
- If you have purchased the Yearly Indie plan, a Perpetual license is added to your account after the plan expires (see the exact terms below)

Pro plan:
- 1-3 licenses can be purchased on a single account
- Export available in the FBX, DAE, USD formats, as well as the proprietary .casc scene format.
- Cascadeur’s tools and features are fully available
- Unrestricted commercial use
- Once the Pro plan runs out, you get reverted to the Free plan, unless you renew it.
- If you have purchased the Yearly Pro plan, a Perpetual license is added to your account after the plan expires (see the exact terms below)

Teams plan:
- 4+ licenses can be purchased on a single account
- All perks of the Pro plan
- Dedicated admin account and a private channel on the official Discord server (please write to support@cascadeur.com, so we could create one for you)
- Additional perks for teams with 15+ and 30+ members

You can find out more about the differences between the plans on the Cascadeur Pricing Plans page.

Both new and old versions of Cascadeur are available to both free and paid subscription plan users. The only difference between the subscription plans is the imposed limitations (or the lack of).

It depends on whether or not you’re eligible to use the Indie license.
There's a clause about the commercial use of the Indie license in Cascadeur's EULA:

“1.6 If you registered for an "Indie" Licence Type, your aggregate gross revenue or funding (from any source of financing) in the twelve months ending on the date when you download the Software, and on each renewal date (yearly or monthly) under Clause 9.3, must be less than US $100,000.00 (one hundred thousand United States dollars) or such other amount as indicated on our Website as a condition of an Indie Licence Type Subscription.
If your aggregate gross revenue or funding has been received in a currency other than US$, they must be converted into US$ on the date of download using that day's Financial Times spot rates.”

It means that if you have been using Cascadeur with the Indie license and your gross revenue hasn’t exceeded 100,000 USD in 12 months after you've downloaded Cascadeur, you are okay to continue using Cascadeur with the Indie plan. Otherwise, you're not eligible to use the Indie license and would have to purchase the Cascadeur Pro subscription plan.

For more info, please visit our EULA page page.

By gross revenues and funding, we mean (in each case, without deduction for tax, costs or otherwise):
- in the case of a corporate entity other than a charity or non-profit or personal service company, all earnings and funding received by you from any sources;
- in the case of a charity or non-profit, your budget and received donations for and from any and all purposes and sources;
- in the case of an individual or personal service company, all earnings and funding received by your clients and customers and persons who engage you or that company from any and all sources;
- in the case of an individual using the Software for your own purposes and products or creations, all earnings and funding received by you in connection with your use of the Software (for example, selling a game made with the use of the Software, but not giving music lessons).

For more info, please visit our EULA page page.

No, you don’t have to. You would only have to renew your subscription plan if you want to continue using Cascadeur without the limitations of the Free license.

After you’ve purchased the Pro subscription, you can receive a “Cascadeur Pro” role on our official Discord server. It can be received by sending a message with your Cascadeur account’s email to one of the admins mentioned in the #rules channel on our Discord server.
You can expect a faster response time and more “involved” help with solving the problems that you might encounter.

The price renewal is offered at the same price as you’ve purchased it for the first time. The new pricing is only applicable to new users or the users who had their plan expire.

The claiming was available for 2 months, from March 19th 2024 to May 19th 2024. It is now unavailable to the general public.
If you had a Pro subscription plan active from March 19th 2024 to May 19th 2024, you can still claim the 2-year Indie license any time in the future. To claim the 2-year Indie, please write to support@cascadeur.com - we'll check your account's eligibility and add the license to the account if it passes the check.

The Perpetual license is an exclusive offer to the Cascadeur Yearly subscribers, available to Indie, Pro and Teams plans. After your Yearly subscription runs out, you will receive limitless access to all versions of Cascadeur that came out during your subscription plan’s term. This includes both major releases and their smaller hotfix versions.
For example, if your Yearly Pro subscription plan runs out on September 12th, 2024, the version 2024.2 (which came out on that exact day) will be added to your Cascadeur account as part of the Perpetual license. The versions that release after it will have a Free license applied to them unless you renew your subscription plan again.

The hotfix versions of the major releases are also accessible by the user as part of the Perpetual license, even if they were released after their license's expiration date. So if, for example, your license expired right after a major version got released, you will still be able to use your Perpetual license with the hotfix versions that came out later.

Yes, you can check it in your Cascadeur profile on the main website, in the "Subscriptions and Billings" menu.

No. The Perpetual license is only available to users who purchase a Yearly subscription plan.

Please write to support@cascadeur.com - we’ll fix version access of your Perpetual license on your account manually

Yes, you will be given access to the last version of Cascadeur that came out during your subscription plan’s duration as per the Perpetual license’s terms.

There are several:
1) The only way to update the list of versions available to you with the Perpetual license is to renew your existing license or purchase a new one. The Perpetual license doesn't receive any updates on its own.
2) The features available to you in your subscription plan will carry over to your Perpetual license. For example, if you purchased a Yearly Indie license, your Perpetual license will have the same access to export, but will not have access to the Pro features.
3) Technical support is provided in full for the most recently released major version of Cascadeur and its hotfixes. If you're using an older version with your Perpetual license, the support may be unable to provide adequate help.

Yes, we explicitly permit commercial use with the Perpetual license.

If you have an active Indie license and using the version of Cascadeur that's included in your Perpetual license list, you should still have access to your Perpetual license's features.
You can quickly check it by opening the Cascy sample scene and using the "Edit -> Retargeting Copy" command, which is a Pro feature.

If you were a Pro license holder and still unable to use the Pro features, try going through the complete re-syncing process:
1) Log out of your account at www.cascadeur.com
2) Log out of your account in the Cascadeur software by going to the Home screen (click on the little house icon in the top left corner of the screen) and pressing the round icon next to the gear icon, then pressing Log Out
3) Log into your account at www.cascadeur.com
4) Log into your account in the Cascadeur software
5) Sync licence in the menu HELP -> SYNC LICENSE
6) Check your license status in the menu HELP -> ABOUT -> CASCADEUR

The Trial license is a free license that can be claimed for evaluation of Cascadeur. It has the same tools and features available as in the Pro license, including the export.
You can claim it on the Cascadeur Pricing Plans page by clicking on the dedicated claim button.

The Trial license lasts for 14 days. After the Trial license expires, you will be automatically put on the license that you've had before claiming.

1) Only the registered users with Free and Indie licenses can claim the Trial license. The Pro users can claim it only after their currently active Pro license expires.
2) The user can claim the Trial license once on every major version (2024.1, 2024.2, etc.) release. The claiming resets with every major release, so the user will be able to claim the Trial license again.
3) The Trial license can't be used commercially.
4) The user's active license will not be "paused" for the duration of the Trial license.

Please write to sales@cascadeur.com to discuss the testing you require.

You can purchase the Cascadeur license of your choice on the Cascadeur Pricing Plans page.
The payments are organized through our payment partner - Xsolla.

Yes, you can. To upgrade your Indie license, you'll just need to follow through the usual Pro license buying process on the Cascadeur Pricing Plans page.
The "unspent license time" you have will go towards upgrading the license. For example, if you decide to upgrade to Yearly Pro after 6 months of using the Yearly Indie license, half of your spent money will be deducted from the price of the Yearly Pro.
Please note that the upgrade is possible to do only from Yearly Indie to Yearly Pro.

Please write to support@cascadeur.com - we’ll transfer your question to the Xsolla representative who will look into the cause of your problem.

First, try syncing your license status with the "Help -> Sync license" command. If that doesn't work, try going through the complete re-syncing process:
1) Log out of your account at www.cascadeur.com
2) Log out of your account in the Cascadeur software by going to the Home screen (click on the little house icon in the top left corner of the screen) and pressing the round icon next to the gear icon, then pressing Log Out
3) Log into your account at www.cascadeur.com
4) Log into your account in the Cascadeur software
5) Sync licence in the menu HELP -> SYNC LICENSE
6) Check your license status in the menu HELP -> ABOUT -> CASCADEUR

If you're still on your older license after going through these steps, please write to support@cascadeur.com - we will remove the older license from your account, to make room for the newer one.

Please write to sales@cascadeur.com about the possible deal.

Yes, we do. Please write to sales@cascadeur.com to ask about the educational license.

No, you can’t. The access to Cascadeur’s tools and features isn’t sold separately.

Cascadeur’s Monthly and Yearly subscription plans are available as a single purchase only.

All Cascadeur accounts that don't have any purchased licenses can claim a free 14-day Trial license.
This time-restricted license has all of the tools and features available in the Pro license, including the export. The Trial license claim is refreshed with every major Cascadeur release (2024.1, 2024.2, etc.), so you can test the new version again even if you have previously claimed the Trial license.
If your Cascadeur account is eligible for the Trial license, you should see a dedicated claim button on the Cascadeur Pricing Plans page.

During step 2 of the check-out, you’ll have the option to input the promo code. Press the “Add promo code” button underneath the license’s price and enter the promo code in the appeared input field, then press the “Apply” button to the right

The “Add promo code” button may be missing for you if you have a subscription plan still active on your Cascadeur account and you’re trying to renew it. The promo code is only available for purchasing a new subscription plan, not renewing an existing one

If you’re buying a new Cascadeur subscription and the “Add promo code” button is still missing for you, please write to support@cascadeur.com - we’ll try to figure out the cause of the problem.

This error appears if you have unsubscribed from subscription auto-renewal in your Cascadeur profile.
If you have unsubscribed specifically because you couldn’t find the “Add promo code” field during checkout - please note that the promo code field is available only for purchasing the new subscription plan and not for renewing an existing one. You would have to wait until your current subscription plan expires to be able to purchase a new subscription plan with a promo code.

We usually hold at least one promotional event every quarter of the year.

If you don’t renew your subscription plan before it expires, you’ll lose the lifetime discount on your account.
If you have lost your lifetime discount due to a technical error (like having your purchase rejected by the system), please write to support@cascadeur.com no later than 2 weeks after your subscription plan’s expiration date - we’ll reinstate the lifetime discount on your account.

Unfortunately, the lifetime discounts are only available to the Early Adopters (users who purchased a Cascadeur license during beta) and Release Adopters (users who purchased a Cascadeur license during the 1.0 release).
Currently, there’s no way to get a lifetime discount for new Cascadeur users

You can. To cancel the auto-renewal, enter your Cascadeur profile by clicking the Profile button in the top right corner of the main page at cascadeur.com. Switch to the “Subscriptions and Billings” tab.
To the right and below the name of your subscription plan you should find the “Unsubscribe” button for canceling the license renewal.

Yes, you will be able to use your subscription after canceling it. If you have lost access to your subscription after cancellation, please write to support@cascadeur.com

Please write to support@cascadeur.com - we’ll transfer your question to the Xsolla representative who will look into the cause of your problem.

This has most likely happened because you didn’t have payment info tied to your account.

Xsolla (our payment partner) has 2 types of subscription types - “Charge” and “Notify”.
“Charge” subscriptions are renewed automatically and require a linked payment account. “Notify” subscriptions are applied if the user doesn’t have payment info tied to their account - in that case, the user receives an email with a payment link for manual renewal.
If the user's payment system supports automatic renewal, the user will be offered to make a recurring subscription on the payment form by checking the box above the payment button. If the payment system does not support automatic renewal, the user can only use the “Notify” subscription type.

Write to support@cascadeur.com to request a refund. Please note that you can request a refund not later than 14 calendar days after the date of purchase.

Unfortunately, we can only refund the full purchase and not the price difference.
Please write to support@cascadeur.com to request a full refund.

Cascadeur is available on PCs running Windows and Linux, as well as Apple’s Macs with the macOS. There are specific requirements for each platform:

1) Cascadeur on Windows is supported on Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) and 11. Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 were supported up until and including version 2022.3.
2) Cascadeur on Mac is supported on ARM Macs (with Apple M1, M2, and M3 processors), with macOS 13.3 or later installed. x86 Macs (with Intel processors) are not supported.
3) Cascadeur on Linux is supported on devices with Ubuntu 20.04 or later installed.

You can find more info about the system and hardware requirements on the dedicated doc page

Unfortunately, the development team currently doesn't quite have the manpower and resources to add support to the Macs with the Intel processors. This decision also coincides with Apple's transition to Apple-made silicon in 2020, thus making the Intel platform effectively discontinued.
Cascadeur may pick up the support for Intel Macs in the future, but it's not guaranteed.

Unfortunately, the development team currently doesn't quite have the manpower and resources to add support to other Linux distributives.
Cascadeur may pick up the support for other distros (Fedora, Rocky Linux 9, etc) in the future, but it’s not guaranteed.

You can download older versions of Cascadeur from the downloads page on the official website.

Some users may encounter the bug with being unable to download older versions of Cascadeur. If that happens, please write to support@cascadeur.com - we’ll send you a direct link to download the requested version.

You can change the input controls in the Settings -> Viewport input settings menu.

In the Input settings menu, find the “Viewport camera…” controls (Viewport camera rotation, Viewport camera translation, etc).

You can change the input controls in the Settings -> Hotkey Editor.

You can save your current settings as default with the “Settings -> Save current settings as default” command. You can also import and export the exact settings of the Settings and Hotkey menus

For input controls, you can change them in the Settings -> Input settings menu.
Since version 2024.2, the timeline controls can be changed in Settings -> Timeline input settings menu.

There are 4 possible ways to hide an object:
1) If your object is assigned to a separate animation track, you can activate the box underneath the “crossed eye” icon, to the right of the track you’d like to hide the contents of. That will hide all objects assigned to that particulate animation track.
2) You can hide the selected objects by selecting them and pressing the V key. To un-hide all hidden objects in the scene, press the Alt+V combination.
3) In Object properties, find the Basic tab. There, you can find the “Visibility” switch. You can set the object’s visibility to Invisible - this will make the object stay invisible even if you press the Alt+V combination.
4) You can hide the particular type of objects in the viewmode’s settings.
To access them, right-click on the currently active viewmode’s icon in the top left corner of the viewport, then in the appeared menu turn on/off the bool in the “Visible” list to the left.

You can add simple meshes to the scene via the commands at “Commands -> Add”.
You can also import your own meshes to the scene with the “File -> Add Fbx/Dae -> Add model” command.

You can do that by right-clicking on the currently active viewmode’s icon in the top left corner of the viewport, then in the appeared menu turn on/off the bool in the “Selectable” list to the right.

Right-click on the currently active viewmode’s icon in the top left corner of the viewport, then in the appeared menu turn on the “X-Ray” bool in the “Visible” list to the left.

This error appears if you’re trying to open a scene that’s been created in a later version of Cascadeur than the one you’re using.
For example, this error would appear if you’re trying to open the scene created with the Cascadeur 2023.2 in an earlier version 2023.1 The scenes aren’t backward compatible, so it’s better to use the latest version of Cascadeur and update when necessary.

This happens because your OS has the 'Block untrusted fonts' feature enabled. Because of this, the system blocks loading any fonts other than those already installed in the system. This, in turn, leads to problems with programs that use their own fonts, including Cascadeur.

There are two ways to solve this issue:

First, you can install fonts used by Cascadeur into the system. Font files can be found in the [Cascadeur main directory]\resources\fonts folder.

A second way would be to add the cascadeur.exe file to the list of exceptions in the system registry. To do this:
1) Run PowerShell as an administrator.
2) Execute the following two commands:

New-Item -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options" -Name "cascadeur.exe"

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\cascadeur.exe" -Name "MitigationOptions" -Value "0x2000000000000" -PropertyType "QWORD"

If after completing both of these Cascadeur still has a weird interface, please find and reinstall the Roboto font located at C:\Windows\Fonts

This happens because your system has non-Unicode characters. To solve this issue, please do the following steps:

1. Go to Windows Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Administrative language settings → Change system locale, and turn on Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support
2. Restart your PC for the changes to take effect

After that, you should be able to save your scenes

This problem happens because Cascadeur spends too much time reading the saved cache files. It often appears in versions before 2024.3, but it may appear in the newer versions if the user uses an older version in parallel with the newer ones.

To fix this issue, go to the cache folder at C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Local\Nekki Limited\Cascadeur\cache\qmlcache and delete all files inside the qmlcache folder. Then, launch Cascadeur.

You can use the “File -> Import -> Import Fbx/Dae” commands to import 3D meshes, Joints, Joint animations, Cameras and Transform objects in either FBX or DAE (Collada) formats.
Also, you can use one of the “File -> Import -> Import USD” commands to import Animations, Models, or entire Scenes in the USD format.

You can learn more about the import process on the dedicated documentation page.

No, Cascadeur currently only supports the FBX, DAE, and USD formats.

The best workflow would be to:
1) Import the second character into a new Cascadeur scene
2) Create a control rig for it and save the scene
3) Switch back to the scene with the first character and import the scene with the second character using the “File -> Import -> Import scene to current” command.

If the second character is a duplicate of the first one or you already have rigged a second character, you can import the needed scene file into the current scene.

The most straightforward way would be to use the “File -> Import -> Import Fbx/Dae” command or the “File -> Import -> Import USD” command.
The information about the differences between importing the Fbx/Dae animation and the USD animation can be found on their respective doc pages.

Import the animation FBX into a new scene and compare the skeleton hierarchies of the base model and the model from the animation FBX. If the namings and/or joint hierarchies of both models aren’t completely the same, then the “Animation” import preset wouldn’t work. That is also true for the additional or missing joints in the skeleton hierarchy.

The problem often can be solved by selecting the joints of the base model that are present in both models and applying animation to them with the “Animation to selected objects” import preset.
This preset is particularly recommended when the only difference between the models is an alternative naming for the root joint or when the model has an additional root joint being a parent to a base skeleton hierarchy.

This is happening because the animation FBX you’ve imported doesn’t have any animation data stored for the toe joints. The toe joints are children of the respective foot joints - that makes the toe joints move together with the foot joints in global space, but in local space, they’re not moving at all.
Cascadeur “writes” the animation data into separate animation tracks and since the toe joints don’t have animation data in them, the animation track containing the toes is empty, except for the frame 0.

To fix this, you can do the following steps before importing the animation:
1) Set the kinematics on the animation tracks containing the toe joints (Foot_L and Foot_R) to FK
2) Select all 6 Point controllers of both toes (3 for each one) and in the Object properties locate the “Poink ik fk settings” tab. There, turn on the “Enforce fk interpolation” bool.
After these steps, your imported animation should have the character’s toes following their feet.

No, you can’t.
If the skeletons of both models are different, then you’d have to retarget the animations onto the base model.
In version 2024.1 a simple copy/paste retargeting tool (available with Pro subscription) has been introduced that allows for the user to retarget the animation between 2 characters with the generated Autoposing rig. If your characters can’t have an Autoposing rig generated, the retargeting has to be done in another software.

This might be happening because the meshes in the imported file are made with quads. The Mac version of Cascadeur currently has a problem with rendering the quad models correctly.
To fix this, turn on the "TriangulateOnImport" setting in the Settings window - this, as the setting says, will triangulate the quad meshes during import.

Yes, you can.
Video references can be imported with the “File -> Import -> Reference video” command, while audio can be imported with the “File -> Import -> Audio” command.
You can find more about importing video references and importing audio on each respective documentation page.

Please note that currently only the .mp4 files that have been encoded with the H264 codec are supported.

Yes, you can.
You can add a plane mesh to the scene with the “Commands -> Add -> Plane” command, then select the plane and press the “Bind texture” button.
Please note that since version 2024.2, the "Bind texture" button is hidden by default. You can make it visible on the toolbar in Settings -> Settings Window -> Toolbar Visible.
The instructions are the same as the “legacy way” of adding a reference to Cascadeur - it can be found on the reference doc page. The only difference would be for you to select a single image, instead of multiple.

You need to manually set a frames path for the video decoder to put the image files into. Press the "Choose..." button next to the Frames path and choose a folder to store the images.

You can create a video recording of your animation using the command “File -> Export -> Video”.

Select a camera object in the scene and press the “Align to camera” button (top left corner of the viewport) - this will align the viewport camera with the object camera in the scene. After that, you can render the video.

Please note that currently, it’s not possible to use multiple cameras during rendering. If your scene has multiple cameras recording different shots, you’re going to need to repurpose a single camera object for recording all of your scene’s shots.

In general, it’s highly recommended that your imported model is about the same size as a regular human (about 180cm/6 feet). It’s okay to use smaller or taller models, but the extreme examples are bound to have problems with rigging and Autophysics.

It’s also recommended that the scale of your model is set to 1.1.1 - this has to be done in another software, since currently, Cascadeur doesn’t have tools for skinning and modifying the joint hierarchies.

To make sure that the exported animation looks correct, you can import it back to Cascadeur into a new scene. If the animation looks correct, the problem probably has something to do with how you’re using the target software.
Please note that Cascadeur support can help you with every Cascadeur-related question, but the questions about the use of other software are often out of our area of expertise. You will have a better chance of solving those problems by reading the documentation or asking the community users of your target software.

Cascadeur has Unreal Engine 4 and 5 mannequins as rigged sample models. In version 2024.2, we also added sample scenes with Xsens, Rokoko and MoveAI characters.
It also has Quick Rigging tool templates for Blender’s Autorig Pro, Character Creator 3, Daz Studio’s Genesis 8 and Genesis 9, Unreal Metahuman, Mixamo, and Ready Player Me.

If the skeleton has completely the same joint namings, then yes - it should be recognized.

No. Cascadeur supports .casc as its own proprietary scene format, as well as FBX, DAE and USD.

There are 2 community-made bridge addons made for Cascadeur:
1) Blender bridge addon by Aron Nemeth
2) Maya bridge addon by Nathaniel Albright

Please note that because these addons are community-made, so the questions about using them would have to be addressed to their respective creators. The Cascadeur team can provide limited support, but the original addon creators would know better how the addon operates.

No, you can’t. In general, control rigs aren’t transferable between software, so if you want to pose and animate the imported character, you would have to create a control rig for it inside Cascadeur.

Moreover, you may encounter some very complex control rigs, with lots of additional controllers, parameters, and even multiple skeleton hierarchies. For those rigs, you would have to understand how they function to try to recreate them in Cascadeur. Even then, some features may be too hard to recreate in Cascadeur, so you’d have to know where to cut corners in order to bring the recreated rig’s functionality as close as possible to the original one.

This happens if the accessory meshes are all parented to their own skeleton hierarchy. Cascadeur moves a single skeleton hierarchy that’s had the rig elements created for it and ignores the other hierarchies that aren’t rigged.
To fix it, turn on the “Merge followers (into Target)” setting in the export settings before exporting the model from Daz Studio.

Learn more about the import and export process between Cascadeur and Daz Studio on the dedicated doc pages.

This is a general problem with exporting FBX files from Blender. There’s no official solution to this, but you can try the experimental one.

It happens if you’re exporting a model from Blender into Unreal. Unreal Engine has a special “rule” for the models that have a root joint named “Armature” - it simply cuts it out, making the child joint of the “Armature” the root joint.
Cascadeur doesn’t remove the “Armature” joint, so when you export the “intact” model into Unreal there’s a hierarchy clash between the two.

We recommend importing the model from Blender to Unreal first and then exporting the model from Unreal to Cascadeur for animation.

Blender has a proprietary "Bone length" parameter that doesn't get exported in the FBX format - that's why the bones look wrong after you've exported them into the scene.
In the import settings, you can turn on “Automatic Bone Orientation” setting to have a better looking skeleton.

There's also a way to partially fix the "big bones" by scaling them:
1) Select the bones with an incorrect size. Make sure that their parent bones are not included in the selection (for example, the head bone not being included if you’re fixing the face bones)
2) Switch the “Transform Pivot Point” setting to “Individual Origins”
3) Press the S key to activate “Scale” and scale the bones down.

Switch to the Mesh mode and select a mesh object. Press the “Bind texture” button. Then, select the texture file you want to apply. To remove the textures, select the mesh and press the “Unbind texture” button.
Please note that since version 2024.2, the "Bind texture" button is hidden by default. You can make it visible on the toolbar in Settings -> Settings Window -> Toolbar Visible.

You can find more info on the documentation page

Currently, Cascadeur isn’t able to read and apply the embedded textures. To apply textures to a mesh, please follow the instructions in the question above.

Currently, Cascadeur only supports defuse/color maps (plain flat texture). Other types, like normal, emissive, opacity, specular, or metallic aren’t supported and can’t be applied together.
Cascadeur can import textures in these image formats - png, bmp, tga and jpeg.

First, select the character mesh by switching to the Mesh mode and clicking on it in the viewport. Then, in the Object properties locate the “Mesh object” tab. Turn on the “Use color” bool and adjust the RGB vector with values from 0 to 255.

Autoposing is a tool used for character posing that utilizes machine learning algorithms for pose prediction.
A special algorithm that’s been trained on thousands of animations from Nekki’s games drives the Autoposing control rig to the closest similar pose it can find in its internal database. The prediction is made based on the way the user manipulates the controllers of a character.

You can learn more about how to use the Autoposing tool on the dedicated tutorial page page.

When the Autoposing tool is not available to you or if you would like a finer control of your character posing, you can switch to the Point Controller mode. There’s also the Box Controller mode used for controlling minor body parts (fingers, hair, accessories, etc) You can learn more about using the Point Controller mode and the Box Controller mode on their respective doc pages.

Currently, the Autoposing tool can only work with humanoid characters with rigs adhering to certain requirements.

The easiest way to build such a rig is to use the Quick Rigging Tool:
1. Enter the Rig mode with your character imported in the scene.
2. Open the Quick Rigging Tool (Objects → Quick Rigging Tool).
3. Set appropriate joints for every field in the window to the right by dragging the joint entries into a corresponding field.

Please note that for Cascadeur to be able to create the AutoPosing rig for your character, you would need to fill all of the fields in the Body section of the Quick Rigging tool, except for the “weapon” fields.
The same goes for the Finger Autoposing - it works only for the characters if you fill out all slots of the “Hand Left” and “Hand Right” sections, so your character has to have a 5-finger, 3-joint hand setup.

See the Quick Rigging Tool and Autoposing pages to learn more about how to do this.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible at the moment, but we are looking forward to expanding the capabilities of our autoposing tool by cooperating with companies that have a large amount of animation data to feed the neural network.

This is happening because certain Autoposing controllers aren’t “active”. When the Autoposing controller is active, the Autoposing tool is restricted from moving that controller during the pose update.
You can experiment with activating certain Autoposing controllers to achieve better control.

If you’re unsure how to better utilize the Autoposing rig, you can read the information on the dedicated tutorial page.

The pose change is happening because the pose update is called after the rig generation.
You can remove the pose change by turning off the “Update autoposing” setting in the Settings window.
You can also reset the pose back to the original one by switching to the Box Controller mode, selecting all of the character’s Box controllers and then running the command at “Commands -> Go to T-pose”.

Cascadeur's Autoposing tool has been trained on in-house posing data with a particular bone placement. Realism is the key aspect of this data.
If the structure in the target skeleton is drastically different from the original skeleton (for example, the model has stylized proportions), the model may experience weird posing errors, such as "shoulder slouching" or other.

This problem has mostly been fixed in version 2024.2 with the AutoPosing tool calculating the difference delta between the suggested shoulder placement and the default T-pose shoulder placement.

The problem stems from how the clavicle joints are positioned - often it’s the models that have the clavicle joints located too far away from the shoulder joints when observed from the side view.
You can find examples of the “correctly” positioned clavicle joints in Cascadeur’s sample scenes, namely the Unreal Engine’s Mannequins, Standard Male/Female and Cascy.
If you can’t alter the position of the clavicle joints in your skeleton, you can try selecting the shoulder controllers and freezing them (Shift+Z) - that will prevent Autoposing from shifting the shoulders too much.

Such Autoposing behavior often happens if the character’s spine joints are positioned as a bent curve. After the pose update is called, Autoposing tries to straighten out the spine’s rig elements, which may result in a hunched posture.

Currently, the only possible way to mitigate the unwanted spine bending would be to freeze the Autoposing controllers in the character’s spine (select the controllers and press Shift+Z).

Check how the main Pelvis controller is positioned between the 2 Thigh controllers. If the Pelvis controller is positioned lower than them, then you’ll need to move it up to their level or higher.

If you’re using the Quick Rigging tool, the easiest way would be to delete the rig and generate it again, but this time turn on the “Align pelvis to thigh” setting in the Quick Rigging tool’s window. If you’re rigging your character manually, you’ll have to correct it with the following steps:
1) Select the Pelvis rig element and move it, so that it’s located slightly higher than the thigh joints.
2) Select the rig element that comes right after the pelvis (Stomach) and press Ctrl+C to copy its transforms. Then, select the Pelvis rig element’s additional point controller and paste the copied data to it with Ctrl+V.
3) If needed, correct the Pelvis rig element’s size by changing the “Ellipsoid” values in the Physics setting tab, in the Object properties.

Go back to the Rig mode and compare how your rig is constructed to one of the sample character rigs. The possible reasons for the pose breaking could be:
- Incorrectly placed rig elements
- Rig elements not in a correct hierarchic order or not parented to each other at all
- Rig element’s additional point placed not at the location of the child rig element’s main point
- Incorrectly placed limb direction controllers for the elbows/knees

If you’re unsure how to fix the issues in your scene, please make a help post on the Cascadeur Discord server or write to support@cascadeur.com.

Specifically with the Autoposing rig you can't turn off the floor collision. If you want to pull the character under the scene's floor, you can either:
1) Switch to the Point Controller mode and animate with it, since it doesn't have the floor collision turned on by default
2) Do your animation above the floor line and when you're done animating use the Interval Edit mode to pull the whole animation down

First, press Alt+V - if you have previously accidentally pressed V key (which hides the selected object in the scene), all of the hidden objects will appear in the scene.
If the controllers are still missing, press the “Enable Autoposing tool” button (in the button row above the viewport, to the right) - this will regenerate the Autoposing rig and the controllers should reappear on your character.

This error appears if the character rig has been created manually or you haven’t turned on the “Create autoposing” setting (right above the “Generate rig” button) in the Rig mode.
Autoposing tool relies on the filled-in “Autoposing info” to generate the Autoposing rig - this info is automatically generated when using the Quick Rigging tool. If Cascadeur can’t find any info written in all of the rig elements in the scene, it prints this error.

To generate the Autoposing rig, you would need to use the Quick Rigging tool when generating your character’s control rig. All slots (except for the weapon_ slots) in the Body tab of the Quick Rigging tool have to be filled with the appropriate character joints.

This error usually appears if the user hasn’t filled all Body slots when using the Quick Rigging tool. Cascadeur can’t find all of the “Autoposing info” needed for generating the Autoposing control rig and prints this error.
To fix this error and to be able to generate the Autoposing rig, you will have to fill all of the Body slots in the Quick Rigging tool, except for the “weapon_” slots.

Autophysics is a set of tools that uses physics-based algorithms to analyze the animation you’ve created and suggest a physically accurate version of it.
You can use it for generating:
- a more physically accurate version of your animation
- physically accurate ballistic trajectories
- secondary and compensation motion for body parts

You can learn more about Autophysics and its tools on the dedicated doc page.

Autophysics can analyze the movement of your character and offer a more physically accurate version of it according to its calculations. Still, it can’t predict what kind of motion you’re trying to make and it can’t generate animation for you.
Cascadeur is an “AI-assisted” animation software, so you’re expected to produce animation on your own, with the assistance of Cascadeur’s tools.

It can, but good generation results are not guaranteed, especially if the user’s animation has poor timing and spacing. The better the animation you “feed” to Cascadeur’s tools, the more accurate generative results they can offer to you.

Although the standard “out of the box” Autophysics settings may work for your animations, it is still very favorable to learn how to tweak the settings and parameters of the Autophysics, to produce a better physics generation.

No, it can’t.
Physics Corrector - one of the main tools of Autophysics - uses Fulcrum points. These points interact solely with the scene’s ground plane and the collision boxes added by the user, and can’t interact with or detect environment meshes present in the scene.
If you have a custom environment that you’d like to use Autophysics with, you will need to add collision boxes to them and tune the Fulcrum points in the scene and the Autophysics settings, if required.

You can learn more about the Fulcrum points and Autophysics settings on the dedicated doc page.

In the current version of Cascadeur - no, it’s not possible.

Collision shapes are present in Cascadeur since version 2024.1. These shapes can be added to the meshes located in the scene.
Please note that the collision box functionality is currently limited to providing interaction to the Fulcrum points. It can’t be used for changing or limiting the poses of the character.

To learn more about the collisions and environment interactions, visit the dedicated doc page

If the character is standing or interacting with a custom environment, you can add collisions boxes to it.

You can learn more about working with Fulcrum points on the dedicated doc page.
To learn more about the collisions and environment interactions, visit the dedicated doc page

If you really need the Autophysics to keep a certain pose on a keyframe, you can set a priority frame flag on that keyframe. This is done by placing the keyframe cursor on a keyframe with the needed pose and pressing the “Set priority frame” button (in the same sub-menu as the “Auto Physics” button). With the flag set, Autophysics will try to keep the given pose while altering the rest of the animation.

This behavior happens if you have incorrectly tuned Fulcrum points in the scene.
The high jump is happening because Autophysics can’t detect any Fulcrum points on the timeline interval where the high jump appears. No detected fulcrums -> the character is considered to be mid-air -> the character is jumping.

You will need to tune the Fulcrum points in your scene to fix the problem. You can learn more about working with Fulcrum points on the dedicated doc page.

This error appears when the Autophysics is applied on an animation that’s less than 3 frames. You would need to select a larger interval in order for the Autophysics to function correctly.

If you have selected the interval larger than 3 frames and Autophysics still gives you the same error, then you might have the Center of Mass placed on an animation track separate from the main animation.
Select the Center of Mass in the scene and see what animation track is highlighted - in your case, it can be set on a Track(0) track. To fix it, select the Center of Mass and then the Body track, then press the “Add objects to track” button in the bottom left corner, below the animation tracks.

This problem may appear if your character rig has been created in a significantly older version than the one you’re currently using. To fix this error, go in and out of the Rig mode - this will regenerate the character rig.

Select the controllers of the body part you want to copy the position of. Press Ctrl+C to copy the transforms of it on the current frame. Then, switch to the keyframe you need the data copied to and while the same controllers are still selected, press Ctrl+V to paste the copied data.
Please note that you can switch between Global and Local modes to paste the global or local transforms of the selected objects.

To learn more about the use of Copy tools, please visit the dedicated doc page.

Select the controllers of the body part you want to copy the position of. Press Ctrl+C to copy the transforms of it on the current frame. Then, select the set of keyframes on the timeline and press Ctrl+Alt+V - that will paste the copied data into all selected frames.

Please note that if you’d like to paste your copied data only into the selected keyframes and have the interpolations between them remain intact, you would need to turn off the “Fixing interpolation on change interval” setting (pin icon above and right of the timeline).

Select all or just the needed character controllers you want to copy the transforms of. Press Ctrl+Shift+C to copy the transforms on the currently selected timeline interval.
Then, select another timeline interval and press Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the copied interval.

For single objects (meshes, locators, joints, etc), it can be done by changing the parameters in the Copier tab of the Scene Settings - you can select what kind of transform data you’d like to be pasted to the selected object.
For character controllers, it’s not as straightforward, since Cascadeur’s control rigs use only the global position of the individual controllers.
You can use a workaround - constrain the controllers to a single object (like a locator) and paste the individual position/translation to it. To learn how to use the constraints, please visit the dedicated doc page

This can be done with the help of the Copy Tool. Follow these instructions:
1) Make sure that the character’s controllers are not fixed, otherwise, they’re going to ruin the poses after we move the character.
Fixed controllers have a red square outline around them. To “unfix” the controller, select it and press the R key.
2) Select all joints in the character skeleton - you can do that by either double-clicking on the root joint in the viewport or right-clicking on the root object's entry in the Outliner window and pressing "Select branch".
3) Select the whole animated timeline interval and set the timeline cursor on the first frame of your animation. Right-click on the root joint in the viewport, to set the pivot on it. Make sure that the Copy tool's Pivot mode is set to "Moving Pivot mode" and the "Relative to pivot mode" is turned on. Both icons are near the Local-Global switcher in the top left corner.
4) Press Ctrl+Shift+C to copy the animation relative to the root joint.
5) Switch to the "Fixed Pivot mode" and press Ctrl+Alt+V to paste the copied data relative to the root joint's position on frame 0. The outcome should have the character moving in place.

You can also select the root joint and in the Object properties window, find the "Fbx export" tab. There, turn off the "Export translation" bool - that setting will export the animation with the root's translation set to the scene's origin.

Animation tracks are the tool used for breaking up the scene’s timeline into tracks and folders. They are used for separating the body parts, objects, reference footage and other things into their dedicated tracks, making the animation process more convenient for the user.
You can learn more about Animation tracks on the dedicated doc page

You can use the Animation tracks for that.
With the animation tracks, you can separate the controllers and objects into separate tracks, allowing you to use different spacing, timing, interpolations and kinematics for on each separate track.

Yes, you can create and remove tracks and folders, merge them and add scene objects to them.
You can learn more about Animation tracks on the dedicated doc page

The Mocap tool requires your character to have a generated Autoposing rig to map the motion from the video reference onto the character.
The Autoposing rig can be generated using the Quick Rigging tool.

Select the number of frames on the timeline equal to the number of frames of your video footage.

The Mocap tool is still a work in progress. Please note that because the tool is capturing the motion from a single camera perspective, it can have a hard time estimating the depth.

Here are the prerequisites for a good mocap video:
1) The video has a single performer or a key performer stands out just enough for the tool to capture their motion
2) The performer's clothes and silhouette are distinct from the background and don't blend into it too much
3) The performer is standing close enough to the camera

You can add a plane mesh to the scene with the “Commands -> Add -> Plane” command, then select the plane and press the “Bind texture” button.
The instructions are the same as the “legacy way” of adding a reference to Cascadeur - it can be found on the reference doc page. The only difference would be for you to select a single image, instead of multiple.

The Interval Edit mode is a tool for applying changes to the transforms of the single or multiple objects in the scene. When this mode is selected, adjustments made to the objects are applied to every position of these objects on the selected interval.
The Interval Edit mode is useful for adjusting the character poses, the animation’s position and direction in the scene space, blending the animation, and more.

You can learn more about the use of Interval Edit mode on the dedicated doc page

You can use Interval Edit mode in Step setting.
Select all of your character’s Point controllers and the whole animated timeline, turn on Interval Edit mode with the Step setting. Set the timeline cursor on the frame 0 and move the character’s pose to the scene’s center - the rest of the animation should follow.
After you’ve moved the animation to the scene center, rotate the character in the same frame 0 so that they are facing the correct direction.

Use the Interval Edit mode in Step setting with the “Moving pivot mode” on - this mode can be turned on by clicking on the little arrow icon named “Fixed pivot mode” near the Interval Edit mode’s button.
Select all of your character’s Point controllers and the whole animated timeline, turn on Interval Edit mode with the Step setting and activate the “Moving pivot mode”. Rotate your character to a desired direction.

The “Fixed pivot mode” has the adjustments applied to every frame on the selected interval in relation to a pivot, i.e. to the position of the selected object in the current frame.
The “Moving pivot mode” has the adjustments applied to the positions of the objects in relation to their positions on the corresponding frame.

You can use the Interval Edit mode with the Linear setting.
First, make sure that the character’s controllers are not fixed, otherwise, they’re going to ruin the poses after we move the character.
Select the character’s Center of Mass, turn on the Interval Edit mode and switch it to the Linear setting.
Then, select the whole animated timeline interval and set the keyframe cursor on its last keyframe. Move the pose to the place you want the character to stop at.

You can use the Interval Edit mode with the Linear or Bezier setting.
Select all or just the needed controllers and copy your desired pose on the current frame.
Then, set the timeline cursor on the keyframe you’d like to have the pose applied at the full influence. Select the timeline interval over which you’d like to blend the pose. Turn on the Interval Edit mode in the Linear or Bezier setting.
After that, paste the pose into the selected interval with Ctrl+Alt+V.

The pose/animation will be copied to the selected interval with a varying degree of influence:
- For the “center” frame the full influence (100% by default) will be used
- For the neighboring frames the effect will grow weaker with the distance from the center.
- At the borders of the interval the influence will decrease to zero.

The Forward Kinematics (FK) transfers the influence from the top of the hierarchical chain to the bottom. Any change in the position of a parent segment affects the positions of every child segment in the hierarchy.
FK is rotation-based, so it produces clean movement arcs. It’s good to use for wide movements that don’t require exact precision.

The Inverse Kinematics (IK) transfers the influence from bottom to top. Positions and spatial orientations of the parent segments are calculated based on the positions and orientations of their children.
IK is translation-based, so it produces precise movement for the end joint in the joint chain. It’s a good choice for cases where your character interacts with surfaces (walking, running, going up a ladder, etc).

GR stands for Global Rotation. It’s a special type of kinematic that produces arch-like interpolation for limbs - arms and legs for a humanoid character, paws for a quadruped, etc. - which doesn’t inherit rotation from their parent objects (like clavicles for the arms).
This can be useful for cases when you need to adjust the character’s body without affecting the limbs’ movements.

The Autointerpolation tool is a tool that automatically sets up interpolation and kinematics between keyframes. Once you have the base blocking of your animation ready, you can activate the tool - it will then try to pick the optimal interpolations and kinematics.
It currently works only with the characters that have the Autoposing rig generated.

You can learn about their differences on the documentation page.

The one to the left is Kinematics on keyframes. The one to the right is Kinematics on interpolations.

You can learn more about them on the dedicated documentation page.

The interpolation between the keyframes is affected by 2 keyframes to the left and 2 keyframes to the right of it. The object’s spacing and keyframe’s timing are also considered for interpolation calculations. By changing the keyframe timing and body part spacing, you can manipulate the trajectory in the interpolation and make it accelerate or slow down.

For example, in an animation with a character hitting a wall, their hand goes very fast until it immediately stops when the hand hits the wall.
In Cascadeur, you can achieve this effect by placing 4 keyframes on the timeline. On the first set of 2 keyframes the hand’s spacing is quite far apart because it’s moving very fast, while on the second set of 2 keyframes, the hand has hit the wall and is standing still in one place.
With this keyframe setup, the interpolation before the hit is calculated using the first 2-keyframe set, while the interpolation after the hit is calculated using the second 2-keyframe set.

You can, provided you have set up separate animation tracks for the different body parts.
For example, if you have a dancing animation, you can use the “Bezier Clamped” interpolation with IK kinematics on the “Legs” animation track to make them stay in one place.
Also, you can use the “Bezier” interpolation with FK kinematics on the “Arms” animation track to have the character’s arms move in smooth arcs.

No, there’s none currently. But we do have text and video tutorials that teach how to use Cascadeur.
If you’re a complete novice in 3d animation and you’d like to learn it with Cascadeur, you can use the available free animation courses that use other software. The knowledge of the “12 principles of animation” is software-agnostic, so as long as you know how to use Cascadeur you should be able to apply these principles to your animation.

This is Cascadeur’s Relaxation feature. It’s used to correct the distance between the rigid bodies - the rig elements that the typical Cascadeur control rig is made out of.
When the limb becomes over- or under-stretched, Relaxation corrects the distance between the nearest rigid bodies by pulling them closer or further away.
You can learn more about the relaxation feature on the dedicated doc page

The most straightforward way would be to fix the point controllers that you don’t want to move at all. For example, if you’re moving the hand but don’t want the rest of the body following it, you can fix the clavicle’s main point controller.

You’re trying to rotate a single Point controller.
The Point controllers only have a global position and can’t be rotated. If you’d like to rotate the character’s body part, you’ll need to select all Point controllers belonging to that body part.
For example, if you’d like to rotate the character’s hand, you would need to select the 3 points controllers of the hand’s rig element - main, directional and additional. To rotate the arm in the elbow, you can either include the elbow’s point controllers in the selection or select the hand controllers and then right-click on the elbow’s main point controller to change the pivot.

You’re probably changing the pose on an empty frame.
This happens if the timeline cursor (red arrow on the timeline) is not set on a keyframe. Because there’s no keyframe, the new pose can’t be saved and it resets back to the previous keyframe.

You can manually place a keyframe (F key for a single keyframe, Alt+F to fill the selected timeline interval with keyframes).
Alternatively, you can change the autokeyframe setting from “Apply changes on keyframes only” to “Set key on change” - the button is located to the right of the red flag button, above the timeline.

You can do that by switching to the Box Controller mode, selecting all of character’s Box controllers and then running the command at “Commands -> Go to T-pose”. You can also reset only the specific body part by selecting only the box controllers belonging to the said body parts.

If you’re using the Autoposing rig (blue and green controllers), you can either select the secondary controllers (smaller spheres next to the limb’s main, big sphere) and press Shift+Z to freeze them or rotate the main controller - that will freeze the secondary controllers and the Autoposing tool will not be allowed to alter them.
If you’re using the Point Controllers, you might be selecting and moving not all of the point controllers belonging to a specific limb. For example, if you’d like to move the character’s hand, you’d have to select 3 point controllers located around the palm.

Hold Ctrl while using the manipulator gizmo

You can use the Tween Machine. To learn more about it, please visit the dedicated doc page.

There are multiple ways to pin the limb in place, but it depends on whether you want the limbs to be pinned during posing or animation.
For posing, you can either freeze (select and press Shift+Z, works only for the Autoposing controllers) or fix (select and press the R key, works for Point and Autoposing controllers) the controllers.
Freezing prevents the Autoposing tool from changing the controller’s position after the pose update, while Fixing prevents the controllers from following their child/parent controllers when you pull them too far.

Cascadeur has a bit of a problem with making the toes stay in place. This problem can be solved by using the Copy tools.
First, copy the correct toes' position on the keyframe with Ctrl+C. Then, with the “Fixing interpolation on change interval” setting enabled (pin icon above the timeline), paste the copied data into the interval where the toes are supposed to stay in place with Ctrl+Alt+V.
After that, fix the toe controllers (select and press the R key), then select the main foot point controller and run the command at "Interpolation -> Interval iterative process" - that will shift the base of the foot to the correct length relative to the toe.

First, check what interpolation you have on the intervals where the feet are sliding. If it’s blue-colored Bezier interpolation, change it to Bezier Clamped or Linear interpolation.

Second, switch to the Point controller mode by clicking on its icon in the top left corner of the viewport. Select one of the limb direction controllers (the Point controller sticking out of the elbows or knees) and in the Object properties window find the “Limb direction” tab. There, check the “Is active” bool - if it’s turned off, you should go through the following steps to fix it:

1) Select all 4 limb direction controllers for each elbow and knee, then select the entire animated timeline interval from frame 0 until the last frame.
2) To the right of the “Object properties” , find the “Apply on current frame” button and click on it - it will switch the button to “Apply on selected interval” and highlight the “Object properties” window with a red border.
3) In the "Limb direction" tab of the Object properties, turn on the “Is active” bool

You can select the animation interval that you need to be reversed and run the “Commands -> Reverse animation” command.

After you’ve imported your character model, you will need to create a control rig for it.
Enter the Rig mode (V button on the top button row, to the right) and start creating your rig. You can either use the Quick Rigging tool or manually rig your character.

Quick Rigging tool is a good option if you have a humanoid character and you’re a new Cascadeur user. The control rig can be assembled in a matter of minutes and you can also generate an Autoposing rig.
The manual rigging is required if you have additional objects that need to be rigged (hair, accessories, props, etc) or you have a non-humanoid character. Manual rigging is recommended for experienced Cascadeur users.

Rigid bodies are elements that are used by Cascadeur to calculate physical simulations of character movements. Their parameters - mass and size - are used for physical calculations and the Center of Mass placement.
When you’re creating a character or prop rig, it’s recommended to adjust the rigid bodies’ Mass and Ellipsoid values to their supposed weight and size - those can be found in the Rig Mode, in the rigid body’s Physics Settings tab in the Object Properties window.
For example, the rigid bodies bound to the chest and hair joints would certainly have to have a different mass. If you don’t adjust the Mass value of those rigid bodies, both of them would weigh 1 kg each, which is incorrect.

No, you don’t have to. You can also use the Box controllers for rigging your character.
The Box controllers are usually used for secondary and auxiliary joints that don’t have a significant mass, such as fingers, hair, accessories, face controls, twist joints, etc.

Cascadeur has good rigging support for humanoid characters with game-ready skeletons (containing just the deformation bones). If your character’s skeleton contains the support bones from the control rig created in another software, you would have to know how it works to use them in Cascadeur.
The characters with complex cinematic-level rigs may be very challenging or outright impossible to recreate. The character models that use Blendshapes/Shapekeys in their control rigs are not possible to re-rig in Cascadeur, since currently there are no tools for mesh skinning.
Quadrupeds are possible to rig, but the characters with 4-joint animal legs may be hard to use. IK-chains with 4+ joints are possible to create, but difficult to pose with IK.
Currently, Cascadeur doesn’t support translation and rotation limits. Because of that, you would have to manually account for those limits during the posing and animation of the robot characters.

The use of the Node Editor allows the user to create complex control rigs for both the characters and the props, but the user is expected to know how to use and apply the Node Editor.

This error usually appears if the character joints form a straight line where there's supposed to be a hinge connection. Characters standing in a straight T-pose often get this error.
To fix this problem, you would have to slightly (by 5-10 degrees) bend the limb in the elbow/knee, so that Cascadeur would be able to more accurately calculate the bending axis for the hinge connection.
The "bending" has to be done while you're in the Rig Mode, but before you add the rig elements to the character skeleton.

Quick Rigging tool is a “drag-and-drop” rigging menu for creating humanoid character control rigs in Cascadeur. It also allows the user to generate the Autoposing rig, provided that the user has filled in all of the necessary slots in the tool’s window.
You can learn more about the tool on the dedicated doc page

Import your character into a new scene and check its joint hierarchy in the “Outliner” window in the top right corner. If possible, compare it to the already rigged character model.

Quick Rigging tool recognizes the character skeleton by comparing the joint namings to joint namings written in the QRT rig files - those are located inside the “autorig_templates” folder in the Cascadeur directory.
If the namings aren’t the same, the Quick Rigging tool leaves the respective body part slot empty.

It’s also possible that your “standard” character doesn’t have a Quick Rigging tool template file present in the standard Cascadeur. You can add it yourself by exporting the template and adding it to the \resources\autorig_templates folder in the main Cascadeur directory.

Yes, you can.
First, fill out the slots in the Quick Rigging tool window that you can. Then, in the top right corner of the QR tool’s window, click on the icon with 3 horizontal lines and select “Export”. Save the file in the “[Cascadeur directory]\resources\autorig_templates” folder and restart Cascadeur.
After that’s done, you should have the Quick Rigging tool recognize the rest of your characters’ skeletons and fill out the slots automatically.

This error occurs when the joints belonging to certain body parts are not in a parent-child relationship. For example, the error occurs if you have used the joints that are not parented to each other for the “pelvis” and “stomach” slots.
To fix that, you can either change the parenting of those joints before you enter the Rig Mode for the first time or rig your character manually.

It depends on what body parts you’re missing.
For example, If your character model is missing the toe joints, you can add empty joints to the scene via the “Commands -> Add -> Joint” command to parent them to the model’s foot joints. That has to be done after you’ve imported your model into the scene, but before you have entered the Rig mode for the first time. Don’t forget to turn off the “Is exported” bool for the added toe joints - it’s located in the “FBX export” tab in the Object Properties window.

For other body parts, you’re going to need to add the missing joints to the model’s skeleton.

You can read about the rigging basics in the dedicated tutorial section and you can watch the tutorial video about rigging on the official Cascadeur YouTube channel.

The mass and size are controlled by the Mass and Ellipsoid values - those can be found in the Rig Mode, in the rigid body’s Physics Settings tab in the Object Properties window.

It’s called the hinge connection. You can create a hinge connection by selecting the additional points of 2 rig elements that need to form a hinge (in the case of an elbow, those would be the upper arm and lower arm rig elements) and pressing the “Union to hinge” button in the Rig Mode’s menu.
You can learn more about the use of hinge connections on a dedicated doc page.

After you’ve created the main hinge connection for the knee, select the next rig element that comes after the hinge, and in the Hinge settings tab of the Object Properties window, turn on the “Is additional” bool - that will connect the additional points of the hinge and the lower rigid body.
Make sure that the lower rigid body’s additional point is located on the same side as the hinge.

Select each rig element that you suspect to be not connected and look at their setup in the Outliner window. If the rig elements are not parented to any other rig elements or are parented incorrectly, you can drag and drop the supposed child rig element’s entry in the Outliner window over the parent rig element’s entry - that will parent them together.
Another way would be to select both rig elements that need to be parented to each other and run the command at “Commands -> Transform -> Set parent”.

You can, but it has to be done after the rig has been generated. You can learn more about the constraints in Cascadeur on the dedicated doc page.

You can either parent the weapon to the hand joint or use the constraint to attach it.
To parent the weapon to the hand, select the prop’s mesh/joint in the Outliner window and drag it over the hand/weapon joint - this will parent the mesh to the joint. Alternatively, you can select the prop mesh and the hand/weapon joint and parent them together with the command at Commands → Transform → Set parent.

You can use the Quick Rigging tool for that.
First, import your weapon into the scene with the unrigged character. If your character has a dedicated weapon joint in its skeleton hierarchy, you can attach the weapon to it, otherwise attach the weapon to the character’s hand.
Second, enter the Quick Rigging tool and fill the QRT slots with the correct joints. Put the weapon’s joint into the “weapon_” slot. Then, create the rig elements.
Third, adjust the weapon rig - pull the directional point to the tip of the weapon and the additional point to the side, adjust the rigid body’s mass and size to match that of the weapon. Generate the rig.

If you’re content with simply attaching the prop mesh to the character’s hand joint, you can do so with the following steps:
1) Create a new animation track for the prop by pressing Ctrl + Shift + N. You can change the name’s track to match your prop’s name.
2) Select the prop animation track on the timeline and add the prop mesh to the scene using the File → Import Fbx/Dae → Scene.
3) Select the prop mesh in the Outliner window and drag it over the hand/weapon joint - this will parent the mesh to the joint.
Alternatively, you can select the prop mesh and the hand/weapon joint and parent them together with the command at Commands → Transform → Set parent.
4) Make sure that the timeline keyframe cursor is set on the first frame and adjust the prop mesh’s local position and rotation to fit the hand - it can be done either manually or by adjusting the local parameters in the Object properties window.
5) Pose the off-hand on the weapon hilt. Select the off-hand's point controllers and the weapon mesh, then run the "Constrain points" command. Select the same point controllers and turn on the constraint.
After the steps are completed, your off-hand should follow the weapon mesh, while the weapon mesh should follow the main hand

Yes, it’s possible. You can parent a locator to the weapon, which you would then constrain the hand to. The constrained hand would follow the locator, which you can move along the hilt.

If your firearm is just a mesh, then you can simply parent it to the hand joint and then correctly place it into the character’s hand.

If the firearm has a proper skeleton or you’d like to add an empty joint to the firearm mesh for rigging, then you can follow these steps:
1) Import the firearm model into the scene with your rigged character. Pose it correctly in the character’s hand(s).
2) (Optional) Add an empty joint to the scene. Select the firearm mesh and copy its transforms (Ctrl+C), then select the empty joint and paste the copied transform to it (Ctrl+V). Rename the joint and parent the mesh to the empty joint (select both the mesh and the joint, then run the command “Commands -> Transform -> Set parent”
3) Select all meshes and joints of the firearm and transfer them to a new animation track (Ctrl+Shift+N).
4) Select all joints of the firearm, then find and select the “Rig Info” object in the Outliner. Run the command “Commands -> Rig info -> Add joints”
5) Enter Rig mode. Start rigging the firearm - create a rig element for the main joint, adjust its size and mass, add box controllers for the secondary firearm joints, etc.
You can find more info about the prop rigging process on the dedicated doc page.
6) Select the firearm’s main rig element and in the Object Properties find the “Points update settings” tab. There, turn off the “Bind with parent” and turn on the “Fk on frame” bools.
7) Select all of the character’s rig elements and in the Rig mode’s “Main actions” menu (window to the left), find the “Prototype center of mass” section - press the “Add” button. This will create a center of mass for the character’s main hierarchy.
Then, select the firearm’s rig element(s) and add the “Prototype center of mass” for it as well.
8) Generate the rig.