Cascadeur for 3ds max users

This page provides an introduction to Cascadeur from the viewpoint of a 3ds max user. Its purpose is to help you to translate your existing experience into Cascadeur.

The Basics

Cascadeur is not a general-purpose 3D solution. It is not designed for creating 3D models or skinning them to joints/bones. Characters should be prepared for animation beforehand, in other programs.

3ds max and Cascadeur use similar approaches to animation. What you need to do is to create keyframes and define character poses for them, while the software will do the rest.
However, there are some differences:

Character poses and positions in Cascadeur are defined by keyframes.
Because of this, at least one keyframe is always present in the scene

Every frame in Cascadeur - including non-key ones - stores animation data. This means that regular frames can be moved, copied etc., much like keyframes.

By default, all keyframes in Cascadeur are placed on the same Animation Track and contain animation data for every object in the scene. However, there is still a way to animate only some of the objects in the scene, or a specific part of your character. Create an separate track for this part or object and place keyframes on that track.

The timeline in Cascadeur is discreet. It always includes an integer number of frames, and keys cannot be placed in the subframe space.
You do, however, still have full control over animation. It can be stretched, retimed and altered in other ways.

At the moment, there isn’t any sort of Graph Editor in Cascadeur. It will be added in the future.

However, Cascadeur includes a variety of tools for adjusting animation directly in the Viewport window. These include:

• Frame ghosts
• Trajectory editing
• Filters for fixing animation errors
• Tools for mirroring poses

...and more.

Another feature of Cascadeur is its Physics Tools. This set of instruments can be used for easily creating physically accurate motions, as well as for improving the quality of the existing animations.

Interface

User interface in 3ds Max

User interface in Cascadeur

1 - Viewport(s)
2 - Timeline/Animation & Time controls
3 - Toolbar/Main Toolbar
4 - Outliner/Scene Explorer

Quick Glossary

Controls