Cascadeur is a unique physics-based animation program, developed by Nekki from Cyprus in 2019. It enables animators to create any complex and realistic action sequences. Users only need to create a few key points in the animation and other corresponding animations will be automatically calculated. Its goal is to eliminate routine work, lower the barrier to entry for beginners, and overcome the limitations of motion capture technology and real stunt man.

The core concept of Cascadeur is to create animations based on real-world physics principles, that is, using a unique motion simulation frame insertion system based on physics operations and machine learning to simulate movement and force in animations. This can make the animation look more natural and real, make animation production easier, and can avoid some common mistakes in the animation production process, such as characters clipping through, floating, losing balance, etc.

As a tool specifically used to create keyframe animations of 3D humanoids or other characters, Cascadeur was originally developed for Nekki's own mobile game Shadow Fight 3, mainly for artists to easily and quickly create animations of characters and creatures. Unlike traditional animation tools, it encourages users to focus on physical features such as a character's trajectory, angular momentum, and pivot points (such as ground contact).

Once the key poses in an action are identified, Cascadeur automatically generates plausible actions that connect them. Even the process of generating key poses can be partially automated. It uses a machine learning-trained system to track the key joints of the character's body: neck, hips, wrists, and ankles. When you manually reposition a joint, the software will adjust the positions of the other joints to match.

Cascadeur provides a series of AI auxiliary tools to help you quickly create key poses that comply with physical laws; uses a unique intelligent controller system to allow you to more conveniently manipulate your character; provides a powerful curve editor to allow you to accurately control the changes of each parameter in your animation; supports physical simulation functions, allowing you to add some complex physical effects to your animation, such as collision, elasticity, gravity, etc.; provides some animation templates, allowing you to quickly start your animation projects; supports for multi-character animation, which allows you to animate multiple characters in a scene at the same time, and lets them interact and collaborate; and more.

Even better, Cascadeur requires no motion capture equipment or a library of pre-recorded actions. Just using the tools and models built into the software, you can create a variety of realistic action animations, whether it's walking, running, jumping, climbing, fighting, dancing, or other more complex actions. Additionally, in addition to physics and machine learning based systems, Cascader also includes a range of traditional rigging and animation tools, and allows to export the files to other DCC (Digital Content Creation) software in Collada and FBX formats.

Key Features

Feature Description
EASY TO RIG Drag-and-drop joints of your character in our Quick Rigging Tool to generate the rig automatically. Rig standard skeletons from Daz3d, Character Creator, Mixamo, Unreal Engine, Metahuman or Player.me with one click. You can customise the auto-generated rig or even create your own for non-humanoid characters.
EASY TO POSE WITH AI Our unique intelligent rig powered by neural networks helps you create poses easier and faster. Just move the main control points and the AI will position the rest of the body automatically. You are free to move any point to retain full control over the result.
EASY TO PHYSICS AutoPhysics Tool allows you to achieve realistic and natural motion, while altering your animation as little as possible. The suggested animation is displayed on a green instance of your character. You can easily snap it to your character once you are happy with the result.
ADD LIFE WITH SECONDARY MOTION Easily add any secondary motion with our dedicated tool. Customise the effect at any interval for any body-part separately. Shake, bounce and overlap to make your animation come alive.
ENJOY A FULL RANGE OF ANIMATION TOOLS Cascadeur offers a vast variety of animation tools e.g. Trajectories, Ghosts, Copy Tool, Tween Machine, IK/FK Interpolation, Graph Editor, Video Reference Import, Cameras and many more! We are trying to make all our tools easy to use and constantly adding new ones to the software.

Official Demo Video

Edition Statement

AppNee provides the Cascadeur multilingual full installers and unlocked files for Windows 64-bit.

Installation Notes

for v2023.1.1+ on Windows:
  1. Download and install Cascadeur
  2. Copy the unlocked file to installation folder and overwrite
  3. Done

Related Links

Download URLs

License Version Download Size
for Windows
Perpetual Edition v2023.2.1 254 MB
v2024.3 276 MB
(Homepage)