What's new as of Apr 13, 2025, visual changelog: Have you seen their new AI motion generation thing? It's pretty cool!
Check out their video on how to use it:
And the humanoid rigs now have a Spline IK in them, to help with better spine autoposing
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Old changelogs:
Spoiler:
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Dec 21, 2024 We've can do ragdolls now with the humanoid rigs!
Check out their video on how to use it:
Oct, 12 Rigged a dwarven sphere! [▣🝙▣]
Fun little guy, but a very tedious rig to make with a billion moving parts - let me know if something doesn't work. His main body is move-able in box & point modes, and all the armour parts are controlled by the box mode
A big update for the humanoid rigs The female one was re-done using the 3BA's mesh - unlike the vanilla mesh, it doesn't distort the moment you try to raise the hands above the shoulders. ^_^ Plus, I've moved some of the controllers around for better posture in AI mode:
I've transferred all that to the male rig as well, so they should behave similarly.
Also, I've copied the physics values from Cascadeur's demo rig, so the Auto physics mode should have a bit more 'bounce' to it.
I've included a separate pack with some weapon models that I've had lying around - you can import them for visual reference (import scene - search for Weapon in the Outliner, select the one you want, drag and drop it onto the WEAPON bone so it moves with the hand, delete the rest):
The weapon can be controlled either with that controller in AI mode - or in the box mode for a bit more precision.
Changed how Root and NPC controllers worked, instead of a constraint, there's now a box in box mode that you can use to specify the position of those bones:
If you liked the old, automatic way of them moving with the character - just constrain that box to the main one (NPC Pelvis [Pelv]_Box) in the Outliner, and it'll move with it.
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I've made a blender plugin to export root motion data to a txt and wrote a small tutorial on using it, so hopefully those of you who make MCO animations that move around my screen all the time might find it useful. ^_^
For me, the real problem is that if I use the so-called 'cracked version', there may be issues with version mismatch. Although I can load rig and pull bones, i cannot freely switch perspectives or lock keyframes (I am using 2023.03). If I want to use the paid version... I am unable to purchase it in my country. (And it's very expensive)
Thanks a bunch for this!! I was just messing around with the previous version of the human rig yesterday, was getting errors with the rig needing to be regenerated on current version of Cascadeur. Perfect timing!!
Ran into a fun problem: motion capture results in animations facing the opposite direction. Rotating the scene didn't help, so I'm guessing the rig needs to be flipped on its Z axis. The armature was easy since you can rotate the root, and everything parented to it flips as well. But there doesn't seem to be a root/parent (proto union?) for the rig elements, meaning I'd have to calculate the degree change for all them. Someone please tell me there's an easier way to resolve this. :)
When I need to rotate the whole animation (mixamo imports often need that), I'm usually doing so using the centre of mass manipulator and the interval edit mode:
Thank you for checking. I confirmed that mirroring works correctly when using the Auto-Posing mode!
In the tutorial videos on Cascadeur's official YouTube channel, mirroring is demonstrated using the Point Controller mode, but that method doesn’t seem to work properly.
Thanks to your help, I can now start creating animations. I truly appreciate it!
Amazing human rig for Skyrim man. I'm curious though, I'm currently do animation work in Fallout 4 and I'm wondering if it would be possible in theory to make a Fallout 4 human rig for that game? If I could create a rig for FO4, this could open many new more opportunities for me in terms of making new animations! I would imagine the skeletons between the two games should be very similar in theory, right? If it is possible, do you think you could reach out to me and show me your process? It would be a huge help for me. Anyways keep up the good work!
My rigging process usually goes like this - I import a skeleton.nif with PyNifly, making sure the bone naming and structure remains intact (i.e. all the settings for Rename bones and Create bones are off), import the nif meshes over it ("Apply Skin to mesh" in the import settings), then export the result as an FBX with the export parameters of Y forward / Z up, scale 0.01, Apply Transforms, Don't Add Leaf bones.
The reason for that Y/Z orientation is that it was the default setting in the JG's HKX exporter, but since that is a Skyrim-exlusive tool (I think?), you might need to pick a different one depending on what you're going to use for exporting (PyNifly?) - can't really help with this one, I've almost no idea how Fallout animations work.
Then I import the created fbx into Cascadeur and rig it - if that's a humanoid-type rig, I usually run Quick Rigging tool on it first, and then manually tweak the twists, adjust the AI posture to my liking by moving the points around, and stuff like that. Cascadeur's quick rig always complains that Skyrim/Fallout skeletons do not have their Spine bones parented to Pelvis, so I manually parent it by drag-and-dropping it in their Outliner menu with the bones list prior to running the rigging tool.
For non-biped creatures, where the auto-rig isn't available, I've watched this video and just messed around with manual rigid bodies creation until it made some sense :-)
Thank you for the RIGS and tutorial for the hkx animation workflow. I would like to know how to make those rigs, since there is not a lot of choice yet.
I try to import a werewolf, what is the proper setting when import nif files in blender? I have both pynif and nif tool addon. after make a very simple animation in cascadeur. I keep getting error "returned non-zero exit status 2." when try to export fbx animation to hkx in blender. The preview of fbx animation in blender looks fine, and I didn't touch any bone structure when I import nif to cascadeur. (the mesh, skeleton.nif and skeleton.hkx from same MOD)
I'm wondering how do you pick the skeleton.nif and skeleton.hkx and know they are working? I have no idea which step I did wrong. If you can provide more detail about rig making workflow will be a lot helpful. Thank you again.
I can't really provide more general details other than what I've already listed, since every rig is kinda unique, and I often trial-and-error until it works :-) I'm not a 3d artist, so all that I know about this stuff kinda comes from just messing about with things 'till it somehow starts working.
For a werewolf, I'd probably start by trying to use \meshes\actors\werewolfbeast\character assets\skeleton.nif & skeleton.hkx
Can't remember why "non-zero exit status 2" happens - are you, per chance, trying to export with a skeleton.hkx taken straight from a SE/AE bsa? You need a 32-bit skeleton.hkx, either taken from an LE installation, or just convert yours with Havok Tools, I've a tutorial for that in the articles section, in the Editing Animations article.
Btw, there already exists a werewolf rig for Cascadeur that was made by Zoot, not me.
Cascadeur is really impressive. I was always intimidated by tools like Blender, but it's so easy to create animations in Cascadeur I went and bought a license. Your tutorials were easy to follow, but unfortunately, I'm stuck on the export from Blender to hkx part because I don't have Havok SDK to build that plugin.
You don't need to build it yourself, there are pre-built versions - mine's been under quarantine for like half a year now, but you can grab the same blender-hkx off Nick's page, where it says Blender-hkx plugin.
Hi there, may I ask what version of blender are you using? I can't get your animmotion plugin to work, it just doesn't seem to install properly, I don't have to the Animmotion export option.
97 comments
Have you seen their new AI motion generation thing? It's pretty cool!
Check out their video on how to use it:
And the humanoid rigs now have a Spline IK in them, to help with better spine autoposing
--------
Old changelogs:
Dec 21, 2024
We've can do ragdolls now with the humanoid rigs!
Check out their video on how to use it:
Oct, 12
Rigged a dwarven sphere! [▣🝙▣]
Fun little guy, but a very tedious rig to make with a billion moving parts - let me know if something doesn't work.
His main body is move-able in box & point modes, and all the armour parts are controlled by the box mode
A big update for the humanoid rigs
The female one was re-done using the 3BA's mesh - unlike the vanilla mesh, it doesn't distort the moment you try to raise the hands above the shoulders. ^_^ Plus, I've moved some of the controllers around for better posture in AI mode:
I've transferred all that to the male rig as well, so they should behave similarly.
Also, I've copied the physics values from Cascadeur's demo rig, so the Auto physics mode should have a bit more 'bounce' to it.
I've included a separate pack with some weapon models that I've had lying around - you can import them for visual reference (import scene - search for Weapon in the Outliner, select the one you want, drag and drop it onto the WEAPON bone so it moves with the hand, delete the rest):
The weapon can be controlled either with that controller in AI mode - or in the box mode for a bit more precision.
Changed how Root and NPC controllers worked, instead of a constraint, there's now a box in box mode that you can use to specify the position of those bones:
If you liked the old, automatic way of them moving with the character - just constrain that box to the main one (NPC Pelvis [Pelv]_Box) in the Outliner, and it'll move with it.
--------
I've made a blender plugin to export root motion data to a txt and wrote a small tutorial on using it, so hopefully those of you who make MCO animations that
move around my screen all the time might find it useful. ^_^
https://cascadeur.com/help/tools/animation_tools/interval_edit_mode
However, when I used the humanoid rig in Cascadeur 2024.3.1, the mirroring did not work correctly.
For example, even if I raise only the right hand from the default pose and perform mirroring,
the hand gets twisted, and the legs cross each other.
Could this issue be specific to my environment?
I would appreciate it if you could check this.
I usually mirror in the autoposing mode, and it works for me?
I confirmed that mirroring works correctly when using the Auto-Posing mode!
In the tutorial videos on Cascadeur's official YouTube channel, mirroring is demonstrated using the Point Controller mode, but that method doesn’t seem to work properly.
Thanks to your help, I can now start creating animations.
I truly appreciate it!
My rigging process usually goes like this - I import a skeleton.nif with PyNifly, making sure the bone naming and structure remains intact (i.e. all the settings for Rename bones and Create bones are off), import the nif meshes over it ("Apply Skin to mesh" in the import settings), then export the result as an FBX with the export parameters of Y forward / Z up, scale 0.01, Apply Transforms, Don't Add Leaf bones.
The reason for that Y/Z orientation is that it was the default setting in the JG's HKX exporter, but since that is a Skyrim-exlusive tool (I think?), you might need to pick a different one depending on what you're going to use for exporting (PyNifly?) - can't really help with this one, I've almost no idea how Fallout animations work.
Then I import the created fbx into Cascadeur and rig it - if that's a humanoid-type rig, I usually run Quick Rigging tool on it first, and then manually tweak the twists, adjust the AI posture to my liking by moving the points around, and stuff like that. Cascadeur's quick rig always complains that Skyrim/Fallout skeletons do not have their Spine bones parented to Pelvis, so I manually parent it by drag-and-dropping it in their Outliner menu with the bones list prior to running the rigging tool.
For non-biped creatures, where the auto-rig isn't available, I've watched this video and just messed around with manual rigid bodies creation until it made some sense :-)
I would like to know how to make those rigs, since there is not a lot of choice yet.
I try to import a werewolf, what is the proper setting when import nif files in blender? I have both pynif and nif tool addon.
after make a very simple animation in cascadeur. I keep getting error "returned non-zero exit status 2." when try to export fbx animation to hkx in blender. The preview of fbx animation in blender looks fine, and I didn't touch any bone structure when I import nif to cascadeur. (the mesh, skeleton.nif and skeleton.hkx from same MOD)
I'm wondering how do you pick the skeleton.nif and skeleton.hkx and know they are working? I have no idea which step I did wrong.
If you can provide more detail about rig making workflow will be a lot helpful. Thank you again.
I can't really provide more general details other than what I've already listed, since every rig is kinda unique, and I often trial-and-error until it works :-) I'm not a 3d artist, so all that I know about this stuff kinda comes from just messing about with things 'till it somehow starts working.
For a werewolf, I'd probably start by trying to use \meshes\actors\werewolfbeast\character assets\skeleton.nif & skeleton.hkx
Can't remember why "non-zero exit status 2" happens - are you, per chance, trying to export with a skeleton.hkx taken straight from a SE/AE bsa? You need a 32-bit skeleton.hkx, either taken from an LE installation, or just convert yours with Havok Tools, I've a tutorial for that in the articles section, in the Editing Animations article.
Btw, there already exists a werewolf rig for Cascadeur that was made by Zoot, not me.