Nekki releases Cascadeur 2025.1 with AI-based Inbetweening
Nekki has released Cascadeur 2025.1, the new version of the AI-assisted animation app.
The release adds a new AI-powered Inbetweening system, for automatically generating believable motion between two key poses, updates to other key toolsets, and glTF support.
Create animations based on real-world physics, aided by AI-based tools
Launched in 2019, Cascadeur is intended as an artist-friendly alternative to conventional animation software for game development, motion graphics or visual effects work.
Although it has standard tools for rigging, posing and animating characters, its unique selling point is a set of AI-assisted, semi-automated toolsets.
Key poses can be quickly established for a character via the AutoPosing system, which lets users reposition a small number of joints, and have Cascadeur take care of the rest of the body.
For a jumping character, the software can then calculate a physically correct trajectory between the key poses.
For other types of motion, a separate AI-trained system, AutoPhysics, converts an existing keyframe animation into a physically accurate version of itself.
Once generated, animations may be exported the FBX, Collada or USD format for use in other DCC applications, or game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine.
Cascadeur 2025.1: new AI-based Inbetweening system
Cascadeur 2025.1 introduces another AI-powered tool: Inbetweening.
As the name suggests, it takes two keyframed poses and generates motion between them, but unlike conventional inbetweening, it can fill in the time with complete, repeating motion cycles.
The animation is generated locally, on the user’s computer, not in the cloud.
The interval being automatically inbetweened can be of any length, but there needs to be fewer than 88 frames between the key poses selected and the nearest neigboring keys.
Updates to AutoPosing, AutoPhysics, Animation Unbaking and Ragdoll physics
Updates to existing toolsets include improvements to the AutoPosing algorithm to increase stability, and improve the behavior of the spine and pelvis controllers.
AutoPhysics gets a new control slider for the Physics Corrector, and improved Geometrical Constraints logic to help preserve the original poses.
Animation Unbaking, for reducing keyframes in raw mocap data, now supports animations that are only partially baked.
The new Ragdoll physics system added in the previous release now supports interactions between characters and props; and supports convex and kinematic mesh colliders.
Workflow and pipeline integration improvements
Other changes include the option to import or export animation in glTF/GLB format.
FBX support has been improved, with the option to select which take to use when importing an FBX file containing multiple takes, and better interoperability with Blender and Daz Studio.
Workflow improvements include a right-click contextual menu in the viewport, providing quick access to common operations that can be performed to the object selected, like setting a pivot.
Subscription prices reduced slightly
There have also been minor changes to pricing since the release of Cascadeur 2024.3.
Indie users – anyone earning under $100,000/year – get new $12/month monthly subscriptions, while the price of annual subscriptions has been reduced from $99/year to $8/month billed annually: that is, $96/year.
The price of annual Pro subscriptions has reduced changed from $399/year to $33/month billed annually: that is, $396/year.
Price, system requirements and release date
Cascadeur 2025.1 is compatible with Windows 10+, Ubuntu 20.04+ Linux and macOS 13.3+.
For users earning under $100,000/year, Indie subscriptions cost $12/month or $96/year. Pro subscriptions cost $49/month or $396/year and add advanced features.
Both are rent-to-own plans, with users qualifying for a perpetual license after one year.
There is also a free edition, which is not licensed for commercial use, and saves animation in its own .casc file format, making it impossible to use in other DCC apps.
Read a full list of new features in Cascadeur 2025.1 in the release notes
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