Cascadeur 2024.2 Released - This is AI Done Right!

Cascadeur, a powerful animation tool with several built in AI powered features, just released Cascadeur 2024.2. There are several very nice new features in this release, including the ability to autorig with multiple characters, blend shapes and more.
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[@ritpop]

thats what we want for retopology

[@askeladden450]

And uv unwrapping

[@vi6ddarkking]

@@askeladden450 There is MeshAnything. They are in Version 2, but even according to them it's not ready yet, but at the rate they are going I'd say a year or two.

[@Jrm5814]

YES DUDE! Someone gets it! 😂. They went & did all the crazy shit, but nobody is adding AI to the tedious stuff nobody enjoys

[@actuallyjustbored]

For real, when will we get AI for motion tracking & solving. Blender is pretty nice but I feel like it could be improved on alot more with ai assistance. (edit: I am programming illiterate so maybe ai wont benefit it at all, but like come on man there is more to ai than stealing peoples art styles without consent.)

[@InvasionAnimation]

@@actuallyjustbored It wouldn't benefit.

[@wailfulcrab]

The licensing changed, it used to be you could do up to 300 frames of animation and do whatever you want with. Now in the trial it seems there is no frame amount limitation, but you can't export it to external formats. Still, 8.25 dollans per month that turns perpetual after 1 year is affordable and can be huge time saver for filling in-betweens.

[@gamefromscratch]

Yeah, it was in the 2024 release they made massive changes to pricing/licensing, and also had a huge giveaway. Handled quite well imho. gamefromscratch.com/cascadeur-2024-1-released/

[@davitheking024]

Like you can't export it in blender, but can you export it in like game engines? That's what I want to understand

[@wailfulcrab]

@@davitheking024 You can save it to work in Cascadeur later, but can't export outside Cascadeur to for example fbx to use it in for example game engines.

[@LeSingeDeMars]

@@davitheking024 There is a fbx export, Blender can open those and .dae too.

[@Peak_Stone]

​​@@davitheking024Sounds like you cant export to anything unless you pay the monthly fee. its a decent model. you could work in it till you have a library of animations , and then license for a month and export them all out. just guessing

[@MikeCore]

So how much longer do we think we got until Adobe tries to snatch this one.

[@laurensdesmet70]

Not every company is for sale, and I'm sure that if they were, they'd knock on Epic's door long before they'd risk stooping down to Adobe's graveyard of potential.

[@litjellyfish]

Not seeing this fitting into adobes portfolio. It’s to niche at this point. Maybe in the future. Who knows

[@WaspMedia3D]

... or Autodesk.

[@mz4933]

Adobe Maxondeskeur

[@robbie_984]

Been using Cascadeur for about a year now and it was probably one of best investments for the pipeline. It is so intuitive and results are super clean.

[@greebly6011]

this company will definitely be bought out

[@JamieBainer]

Looking forward to these kinds of tools being implemented natively in Blender.

[@litjellyfish]

Yes it will be nice when it’s done in around 10 years. Or well if it’s going to be in a commercial plug in to blender maybe 5 years is enough

[@AnnexedGames]

might be time to look at your monitors brightness/contrast if you cant see that logo lol the logo they used reminds me of an in-game initial brightness setup menu

[@3dchick]

I love the idea, but there's definitely a learning curve. Once I "get" it, I'll probably want it for life, but I'm not there yet.

[@beetledjuice3062]

Looks great to block-out animations super fast. I imagine it's not 100% and some tweaking would probably be necessary, but looks like a fun piece of software to fuck around.

[@marranin007]

Yeah, some tweaking is probably necessary, but it really IS too good to be true it's almost like magic. The people who made this make mocap level animations for their games with this

[@vi6ddarkking]

I just got my copy and boy as someone that had to go through the tedium that is creating facial blendshapes manually. I am salivating at the prospect of them automating that feature. In the meantime the retargate and interaction tools will serve me well.

[@scottybreuer]

Blender has an add-on called FaceIt. You rig up point controllers and it will generate the basic expressions so all you have to do is refine them.

[@vi6ddarkking]

@@scottybreuer I meant if they can do it without the face rig. Even with Auto Rig Pro I never really got the face skinning to where I'd like it.

[@trsiam7779]

Never thought hearing the word 'camtasia' would be nostalgic

[@revotiva]

we need more deep tutorials for cascadeur

[@TheFunDimension]

I have been waiting for animal support. 4 legs and flying creatures mostly.

[@AlinaDiabina]

I hope next year!

[@Blue_snapdragons]

You can do those already, but you just have to add the weight values to each part of the body.

[@Legion831]

Hands down I would buy it if it wasn't a monthly prescription

[@Blue_snapdragons]

You should be able to get it to become a perpetual license after a year

[@loremipsum3147]

haven't you watched the video? Yearly payment comes with perpetual license

[@MrEnvisioner]

Pretty cool! Out of curiosity, how does the animation guesswork fair against non-humanoid bone structures? Like, if you had a ghost/wisp that is cut off at the legs, would the torso/arms/head continue to work? Or could it guess the movements of a cat (I would suppose it might ineffectively by trying to apply "human" guesswork onto the cat anatomy)?

[@scottybreuer]

Non-humanoids have less support than humanoids. But since autoposing is primarily for the broad strokes and you're going to tweak it anyway, it's no huge loss. The other tools in Cascadeur are still really good for getting the physics right and you'll ultimately rely on them more than the autoposing.

[@hirkdeknirk1]

This is what I originally expected from AI. But then there were only these “text to nonsense” applications and I had already given up all hope.

[@InvasionAnimation]

Same

[@Desmond-Dark]

Eleven Labs' text to sfx seems awesome.

[@InvasionAnimation]

@@Desmond-Dark It sucks.

[@maxwell_edison]

Personally I think we should just abandon the word 'AI' since people associate it with generative crap now. Machine Learning sounds cooler and is more accurate anyways, leave 'AI' to the generative dall-e chatgpt grok chuds, I'm kind of sick of seeing the term.

[@bioburden]

"Pretty Spartan"?! I think you mean "pretty sparse". Great update to an awesome tool.

[@BlueChrome]

English isn't your 1st language?😁

[@andyklyen6885]

I wonder if it would work for multi-leg creatures - crabs - quad-bots / crabs etc?

[@scottybreuer]

Autoposing? No. Physics correction, and IK?. Yes.

[@InvasionAnimation]

This is actually good ai assistance! This is the direction to go! Not the ai generated crap that lazy things love so much.

[@hotfishdev]

The main thing that is keeping me from trying this out, is Steam's disclosure requirement. Would be kinda nice if they allowed stuff like this to be used in development without the project being given the black "AI-generated" mark.

[@arunachalpradesh399]

how will steam even know if you have taken help from ai, you can just lie that you havent used

[@jamaalsineke2405]

Roof tops and alleyways (the parkour game) was fully animated in Cas.....and its on steam and doing well. IN fact a lot of the new indie games are using Cas....you're missing out

[@mkaranstudios3553]

Theres a big difference between using Ai assisted animation and generating textures/3d models from other artists work without their consent...

[@takashy87]

that's kinda my concern as well. I know that a lot of people probably won't carer, but at the same time there's some that won't bother with your game due to that AI flag.. and to me there's a huge difference between AI generated art / models / music and this tool.. Though I guess that it would depend on how Steam classifies AI. Do they care if it had anything to do with AI at all or only if it's AI generated ? After all Cascadeur isn't making animations from 0. A human still has to give it some input to drive those animations, so perhaps it wouldn't count as "AI" in the eyes of Steam? 😅

[@hotfishdev]

@@takashy87 Steam requires the disclosure of anything created with “the assistance of AI tools”. They are incredibly vague. Cas would def fall into that, as it is an AI tool assisting with asset creation. (Animations are assets.)

[@urgyenrigdzin3775]

I tried the beta version and tutorial was very good at the time. Recently I tried the newest version before this one, so many changes for the better but much of the tutorial are confusing.

[@patnor7354]

Awesome stuff

[@sanketsbrush]

hey! that looks like a handy tool to have around

[@IWillYeah]

I'll have to have a look as to what features are avilable tier relative.

[@B1aQQ]

What do you mean there's no logo?

[@poly-pheme]

I'm guessing the brightness/contrast of his monitor is tuned in such a way that the light grey of the Apple logo is imperceptible against the white background.

[@gamefromscratch]

Yeah... Are you telling me you see a logo? ;)

[@B1aQQ]

Schrodinger's logo. Has branding gone too far?

[@poly-pheme]

@@gamefromscratch hehehe, yup, it's there.

[@TheRealJman87]

@@gamefromscratch There is definitely an apple logo there, but there isn't much contrast between it and the background color. Try adjusting your monitor's contrast up or maybe the brightness down a bit

[@tobyfredson5668]

Cool!

[@TheRealJman87]

As long as the AI isn't trained on stolen intellectual properties (like most image generators are) then I'm all for it

[@HalkerVeil]

There is clearly an Apple logo there. Your screen needs calibration badly.

[@nGons]

I feel like AI is becoming more of a marketing ploy. I've been using Cascadeur since its first beta version, and it uses pose estimation algorithms. The only AI they've added is pose extraction from images or videos (Mocap).

[@furrieoussheadquarter1359]

I wish there's an AI for 2D framing... That repetitive thing is the only thing that I will support to death. Not the replacement of animators!

[@vi6ddarkking]

Well... Given you can use Video Generation AI to create the reference Video Cascadeur can use to create poses. You can use it as a text to key frame animation tool with extra steps.

[@InvasionAnimation]

That's dumb. If you are going to use generative ai why not just generate the whole thing.

[@vi6ddarkking]

​@@InvasionAnimation The AI tools aren't there yet. Besides, you always want to clean up and Cascadeur is the best tool for the job.

[@InvasionAnimation]

@@vi6ddarkking I agree that this is a good tool. generative ai like ai videos shouldn't exist.

[@vi6ddarkking]

@@InvasionAnimation Ofcourse it should, it's the only way to automate the animation process to the point where Indies can compete with Hollywood.

[@InvasionAnimation]

​@@vi6ddarkking Don't delude yourself with that false promise boy. Indies compete with hollywood all the time. Helluva boss, hazbin hotel, lackadazy, dinosauria The amazing digital circus. All successful, all arguably better than a great deal of animation released by hollywood today. And by that very logic hollywood would automate it faster than any indie where they still dominate and we have soulless slop everywhere that no one put time or effort to create. The joy of creation is what makes animation great. Automating it with ai is a trifling idea, only a lazy sicko in it for greed would have. Creating a whole world, a whole story, and telling it to the world is a beautiful thing. If you want to create an animation, create an animation. Don't beg for ai to do it and screw over millions of folks in the name of lazy generic selfishness.

[@robinj6997]

I totally agree with everything except; it does replace the artist. The latest SAG-AFTRA strike is for the on-camera performers, studios don't need to hire them anymore since Cascaduer solves it faster and cheaper, which is a good thing. “off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers,”

[@MabelYolanda-c9i]

The documentation is not clear about compatibility with Unreal. Do you know more about it?

[@terenceteb3020]

Will the FREE 2 license still work if we upgrade to 2024.2???

[@NScherdin]

So will we finally have physically accurate melee in games with something like this?

[@ItsRagingRay]

i need to learn how to do this with Vroid/VRM models

[@digitalopuscreative]

I'll bet the house that AutoDesk is going to buy out "Cascadeur" within a year or two.

[@takashy87]

I'd really like to try this one out, but the problem is that the free version only exports to .casc and not fbx / dae. Meaning that you probably can't even try out those animations in any other places, like Unity / Unreal or Blender where you actually need/want them 😅 You pretty much can just use the Free version to play with it and see if you can make animations with it, but you have to pay at least 99/year to even get the chance to try out if the animations work well with the software you need them imported to..

[@Desmond-Dark]

You can't pay per month?

[@VillagerVibes-g9l]

ok i got the animation for example.but how can i switch models to a custom blender model with the same animations?is it possible?

[@litjellyfish]

Yes. But why talk about blender model. Talk about external model. Ffs there is standard model formats. Blender is just a software not a unique model format. Blender. 3dsmax. Maya. Whatever.

[@VillagerVibes-g9l]

@@litjellyfish ok but can i import the animations from it to blender with my own custom environment

[@litjellyfish]

@@VillagerVibes-g9l what does “custom environment” it has export to standard model/animation formats. I assume blender supports import of such. I know for example that blender has longtime buggy/odd fbx import/exporter. But that problem is on blenders side. Short version. It has support for industry standard export import. I don’t know exactly what of these formats it supports. I bet their webbpage has the answer

[@Amipotsophspond]

does it work with non human shapes? like a dragon, a whale, snake, car, tank, horse and buggy, train, slime monster or playing card guard from Alice in wonderland. like if I was doing toy story a lot of the plushy teddy bear toys would have human like movement, but not a human shape. where a mermaid might have a human shape but not human movement. I would just like to see what limits can be pushed with this.

[@Blue_snapdragons]

I believe you can get non-humanoids to work, you just have to set the weight of each body part yourself.

[@3v1l73ddy]

"mac download works even though there's no logo" *logo staring him in the face* anyone else notice this? Did I mishear him or something?

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

It's an impressive application; but the pricing structure blocked me from using for personal projects that I don't plan to sell. It's a fair price for anyone doing a for-profit project, though. I'm just not their audience. It's REALLY GOOD, though; so if you're making a 3D game for fame and profit give it a real look. It can help you punch above your indie weight class for a good price.

[@pflovv]

Anything is better than Adobe nowadays, but is Cascadeur also a vendor-lock in or not?

[@InvasionAnimation]

Adobe sucks.

[@pflovv]

@@InvasionAnimation Don't blame Adobe, it's dying anyway.

[@InvasionAnimation]

@@pflovv As it should. What a horrid company.

[@MarcV_IndieGameDev]

Make this blender plug-in xD

[@loikinglish]

Could I mocap animations to add them in modded GTA 5 ?

[@EternalZS]

Yoo wats good

[@SomeNerd361]

For context I'm an ignorant fool when it comes to animation, but how does this differ from something like inverse kinematics?

[@jamaalsineke2405]

Cas has Inverse and Forward Kinematics. You switch between the two modes to make your anim. If you have Auto pose enabled on a humanoid character it helps you make more believable poses while youre crafting the anim. And the physics section is the best part of the software cos it works with people, animals, pretty much anything. You apply physics near the end of your animation to add that extra polish. The physics has collision detection, mass, secondary motion etc.

[@takashy87]

from my understanding this is like IK, but supercharged. Not only does it affect the bone you're moving but any other ones that might realistically be affected by the movement as well. It basically tries to predict any changes of the rig that might apply after you tweak it, while in the case of IK (I guess) it only is very bare bones and only affects the bone you are altering the position/rotation/etc. of. So in the long run it just saves you time, by (hopefully) speeding up the posing process and cutting out some of the manual steps you'd normally do.

[@litjellyfish]

Short version. It’s a better more modern evolution of IK

[@lpnp9477]

Kinda cool. Not really cool enough for yet another subscription but yeah, kinda cool.

[@InvasionAnimation]

This is actually useful ai that actually assists rather than replaces. Personally I wouldn't use it, but I think this is fine for others.

[@MeaganEater]

"It is not here to REPLACE the ARTIST; it is here to assist the ARTIST." A Few Months Later "It has replaced the ARTISTS." AI learns by Learning Models, the Artists who work with the AI are training their REAPLCEMENT.

[@justgamevideos1356]

Whats the free alternative that will export to fbx or usd format?

[@litjellyfish]

What do you mean? You can’t export out from the free version of this software. That is a paid feature.

[@LoneBagels]

Cascadeur is amazing! Wouldn't be surprised if Adobe, Autodesk or some other giant acquires it.

[@applenine991]

Don't invoke them 🥲

[@beetledjuice3062]

No, please no! NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO

[@litjellyfish]

I would be. At least at this stage. To niche. Still to complicated. It’s to hand key stuff. It’s not like mixamo

[@danielgrezda3339]

Hopefully in the future we get more of these tools instead of "I made a chat gpt wrapper, my company deserves a billion dollars!"

[@hellomistershifty]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oYK7enSjmrZ5p6M I think you might need to calibrate your monitor, my friend

[@ferdinandkasangati5089]

You cannot export to anything, the only thing you can do is learning

[@litjellyfish]

In the paid version you can. Just not in the free version

[@martinsalves-io3bc]

I like this idea but I don't like this software usability.

[@emanks1094]

For people who work in 3D animations, how this affected your commissions ?

[@TwoGamersOneLove]

Would this conflict with steam “no ai” rules?

[@DaussPlays]

Steam doesn't have no AI rules.

[@litjellyfish]

No

[@itzhexen0]

Here is an idea. Like that Doom AI you've probably seen. Well have something like DNA to define a structure in this case it would be the structure of the game. All visual elements and other things are completely developed by AI. So instead of trying to just render all of it or whatever the AI was doing there. It has a structure of the game and it's elements to follow and goes from there. Referring back to this game structure to expand it. If it can actually follow a storyline that would be even better. Later it can generate the story line by itself or you can just prompt what you want and then create this game structure to follow by itself which it follows throughout the whole game to remain consistent.

[@InvasionAnimation]

Or just play an actual game.. Instead of being a pig.

[@InvasionAnimation]

That is a dumb project, and all that uses that crap should be eaten by fish.

[@rremnar]

This has potential to replace mocap. Building new mocap files is expensive (cost of an actor, tech, etc). So this would definately save a lot of money if the AI is good. On the otherhand, why not just create poses, and create interplated frames between? I figure that's always how it's been done for non-mocap.

[@litjellyfish]

This is exactly what it does. It a normal key frame animation software bit with better pose controls and a bit of physics to handle the secondary motion. Nothing new just a continuation of what film box started 30 year ago or so. And people need to separate things. This is not going to replace mocap. At all. It’s not even AI generated animation that might replace mocap. This is like to compare recording sounds with a mike. Vs a software that allows you to place some notes and then it can generates pretty good beats

[@objcap453]

I'm tired of the 'it's just a tool' mantra. AI startups, as discussed by Midjourney initially, aim to automate processes as much as possible, with human assistance becoming optional. Since none of these AI startups can market their products as full solutions to the problems they tackle, they are forced to say it's just a tool. If they could claim that no adjustments were necessary, they would likely use that as a major selling point to acquire more funding from investors and make greater profits from game or VFX studios, potentially cutting production costs in half. Most AAA games nowadays are made purely for profit, passion is a thing of the past in this hollow, profit driven society.

[@ChimeraReiax]

Cool bro this has absolutely nothing to do with cascadeur

[@litjellyfish]

It’s just a tool. And AAA has always been for profit. Nothing has change apart from the industry growing bigger.

[@objcap453]

@@litjellyfish Are you even in the industry? I've seen myself how concept artists have slowly lost their job, friends included. Several of my Amazon FBA clients have transitioned to midjourney background instead of 3D ones, and you are telling me it's just a tool? Perhaps work in the industry for at least 5 years to understand the dynamics.

[@HyBlock]

It's pronounced casca-DER not cascaDOOR 😄

[@Zyhmos]

bruh, calm down, you're supposed to spread uploads out to make them consistent

[@IWillYeah]

The longer one waits the less relevant said news becomes. Besides, this isn't TV, so I see no problem with this pacing.

[@Elwaves2925]

There is no 'supposed to' for any of this.

[@ScooterCat64]

He's not here to be Mr. Beast

[@hellomistershifty]

yeah and why isn't this mangled into a 20 second youtube short covered by memes and tiddies wtf

[@durgayadav3075]

Man please add their mocap ai modal in GPU memory not in cpu ram ,, u suck casaduer in ai mocap just use GPU ...

[@litjellyfish]

Cool if they suck you ca. Implement that fix and give it to them. Work done. Thanks.

[@En0834]

Waste of time and money. There is free alternatives that do the same but better.

[@litjellyfish]

Is that so. Then please give me the name and link to such?

[@En0834]

@@litjellyfish I am not your personal provider, you can google it if you want.

[@luis_pifano]

I'm interested, can you name the alternatives? Thanks!

[@itzhexen0]

Might as well just play games fully created by AI at this point.

[@Kaanu-vm7vc]

Nah shut up AI bro

[@itzhexen0]

@@Kaanu-vm7vc This tool uses AI. You shut up.

[@itzhexen0]

@@Kaanu-vm7vc If it can do this is can do the rest of the game. Go get an actual job.

[@damaomiX]

At this point there is no one game that is fully created by AI yet (the google one is not).

[@itzhexen0]

@@damaomiX I am aware. See my new comment.