Question 1

My character model doesn’t have a proper humanoid skeleton to fill out all of the Body slots of the Quick Rigging tool correctly. Does that mean that I can’t use the Autoposing rig at all?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 2

Are there any tutorials that teach manual rigging in Cascadeur?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 3

How do I change the mass and size of the manually added rigid bodies?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 4

How do I make an elbow/knee rigging setup that makes the limb rotate only on one axis?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 5

My character has digitigrade (animal leg) limbs with 4 joints. Is it possible to create a double hinge connection for such limbs?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 6

After I generate the rig, it looks like some of the rig elements are not connected. Can I connect them somehow?

Accepted Answer

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”.

Question 7

Can I add constraints to my character rig?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 8

Can I create a quick simple rig for a weapon, like you can create one for the character model?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 9

I want to attach a weapon to my character’s hand. How would I do that?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 10

I have a two-handed weapon and I want my character’s left hand to follow the weapon. How can I do that?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 11

I want to attach the character’s left hand to the weapon hilt but still be able to move the attached hand along the hilt. Can I do that?

Accepted Answer

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.

Question 12

I would like to import and rig a firearm in Cascadeur. How can I do that?

Accepted Answer

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 actio

CascadeurA 3D animation software utilizing AI-assisted and physics-based tools to simplify the creation of realistic character animations.

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Overview

Key features

Pricing

Use cases

Realistic Character Animation

AI-Assisted Keyframing

Game and Film Animation Prototyping

Indie Animator Production

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

Battle record

Last battle

Reviews

Years in this space

Use it every day

Years in this space

Years in this space

Q&A

Ask a question

Video Generation alternatives

Steve Ai

Voe Ai

Animate AI

vidBoard AI

Runway ML

Elai.io

HeyOz

Lumen5

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