This looks pretty cool
its no Endorphin, but its a start. 
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And of course Reallusion Adds there own version of cascadeur styled AI assisted Autopose with its advanced version locked behind an annual rent wall
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From what I have seen UE5 lacks a mature graph editor and NLA
I mean its “there” but lacking many needed features
which is why nearly every professional game dev uses Maya or Blender for Character animation and exports to UE
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Just revisiting My thread here to say I have spent the last three days getting familiar with my new pro tier license of cascadeur 2025.
It is clear ,to me why, so any indie game devs and small studios have embraced this incredible purpose built character animation software.
There truly is nothing like this on the market (and I use Both Maya and Blender)
I Primarily use Auto Rig Pro rigs, in Blender, which has a built in retargeting profile for the UE mannequin which saves me the step of exporting my ARP rig out to Cascadeur to be Characterized and animated.
So I can just open cascadeur and start hand animating the included UE4 mannequin knowing full well the data will be easily transferred to my ARP rig and put any
final polish ,in Blender, on top with the animation layers addon from superhive.
Very exciting times for character animation.
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Cool. Might have to try it myself, although I’m getting more comfortable with character animation in Blender itself.
Unfortunately, due to the marketing of Cascadeur heavily focusing on the “AI” and “LLM” buzzwords, I don’t think I could use this without being shamed out of the fiercely anti-AI Newgrounds community I tend to make my animations for. Does it actually use controversial AI technology or is it just a silly, meaningless buzzword to get more coverage from currently AI-obsessed clickbait articles?
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Depends on what you call controversial AI technology. It doesn’t use LLMs, but it does use machine learning and neural networks
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Which could be seen as a reason why Endorphin (which had a realtime version known as Euphoria), could’ve been seen in hindsight as far ahead of its time. The Force Unleashed for instance (which used the tech along with a highly advanced destruction system) remains even today perhaps the most advanced game title ever made when it came to environmental interactivity and realistic ragdoll movement, which a lot of modern titles do not even come close, and it did not require AI or an NPU to do any of the heavy lifting.
The risk is that the science behind advanced algorithm development could become lost knowledge with the focus on LLM and its sister technologies (which are obviously a lot more difficult to implement but can work anywhere as there is no training data required).
The demos look impressive though, but if all of it is dependent on training data then it can’t be guaranteed that it will just break down dramatically once you apply it to a scene that is not in the database (though this can vary based on how the algorithm is set up).
Unfortunately, due to the marketing of Cascadeur heavily focusing on the “AI” and “LLM” buzzwords, I don’t think I could use this without being shamed out of the fiercely anti-AI Newgrounds community I tend to make my animations for. Does it actually use controversial AI technology or is it just a silly, meaningless buzzword to get more coverage from currently AI-obsessed clickbait articles?
Cascadeur does not use any so called “scraped” public data set sets that people can claim were “stolen” without permission.
However if the rabble over at your Newgrounds community are going to lynch you for the level of “AI” in cascadeur then make sure you never use the auto rig pro addon , (or at least publicly admit to it), over there as ARP supposedly has some “AI” assisted mesh volume center calculation for improved finger auto weighting. 
Which could be seen as a reason why Endorphin (which had a realtime version known as Euphoria), could’ve been seen in hindsight as far ahead of its time.
Endorphin was/is realtime.
Euphoria was its successor and only available
as an integration service into custom game engines
And yes Endorphin was not only decades ahead of its time but in many aspects remains unmatched today.
This is also partly due to the fact that ragdoll simulation is very niche as ragdoll has not really progressed in the last 20 years
since game engines have moved towards “homogenization” with UE & Unity supplanting in house engines
Actually I am part of an elite global minority that still uses Endorphin.
The FBX/BVH data it exports is so decrepid that the only way I can get into a modern 3DCC is via processing in the old 3DXchange pipeline software from Reallusion.
I have not had a go at the Cascadeure 2025 Ragdoll simulation system yet.
But frankly I predict, in a head to head comparison, Endorphin will still win in 2025
The demos look impressive though, but if all of it is dependent on training data then it can’t be guaranteed that it will just break down dramatically once you apply it to a scene that is not in the database
Uhhmmm…. no
you have zero understanding of how it works. 
Cascadeur is a stand alone 700mb installation
(My Main production PC remains air gapped from the internet ,for security, only going online for a few seconds every month for several
license checks)
All of the Auto physics/ragdoll etc simulation are calculated internally on the rig controllers and baked to the timeline it is NOT referencing some huge data base looking for an existing sample of how a human’s hands “flop” about when he is jogging etc.
I am aware that physics calculation is established math so yes, anything that relies on general physics would probably not include specific training.
Though it was reported that the marketing talks about machine learning and neural networks, and both of these being present imply some level of training might be involved (though I am now recalling that the training for these things is often done on the user end through things like input reinforcement and multiple simulation runs, so also yes, there actually would be no external database here in the same vein as with an LLM at the cost of required interaction from the user).
Though I also recall seeing a user demonstration of Unity’s genetic algorithms for a simple racing game and just how much interaction from the user is required (up to 100 generations to really make it believable and smooth, if not more), though this was perhaps 10 years ago and I assume the approaches have improved since then.
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Though I also recall seeing a user demonstration of Unity’s genetic algorithms for a simple racing game and just how much interaction from the user is required (up to 100 generations to really make it believable and smooth, if not more), though this was perhaps 10 years ago and I assume the approaches have improved since then.
This product has been on the unity market nearly ten years.
as I said biped ragdoll simulation has been stagnant (arguably regressing) for over a decade
The vestigial Poser software has had a Python based ( now free & optional) rag doll & rigid body physics engine since at least 2006.
I am not sure what so called “AI” is running inside cascadeur
Nor do I care. 
But such physics certainly do not require LLM’s or “deep training "sessions etc.
Maybe I can ask for clarification on Newgrounds’ own forums on their stance on stuff like Cascadeur. I do know the Art Portal rules of that site say to avoid even using a lot of pre-made or kitbash assets in my 3D art submissions, or at least not use them as the main focus of my render (it’s probably fine if I just use pre-made assets for set dressing behind the main character, at least). I do know using software that kind of does a lot of the work for you (even if they’re old), like Windows Movie Maker 3D or Source Filmmaker, is a bit dicey and of course you would get bullied off the site entirely if you use the infamous “GoAnimate” website for “animation.”
Won’t know until I ask the right people, I guess. I’ll go do that now…
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Maybe I can ask for clarification on Newgrounds’ own forums .
Newgrounds was once a prominent force in the golden age of flash animation on the internet.
Not so much these days as 2D animators have moved on to “less restrictive” communities.
Ironic that Adobe now owns flash and still sells it,
(in the form of Adobe’s 2D character animation apps )
Thus would likely be banned under Newgrounds Draconian restrictions just for the face and body camera tracking ,to say nothing of Abobe’s other major acts of “heresy” regarding generative AI.
Sounds like my Moho Pro
and Reallusion cartoon animator would be
would be denounced as
“blasphemy” as well as they both can auto generate lipsync from imported audio files and reallusion can import 3D animation from Iclone
But man,cascaduer is truly such a great animation software
so good luck with your “struggle session” over there. 
Whether Newgrounds is highly restrictive may be quite dependent on how the media is created. Before Apple rang the death knell of the golden age of browser gaming and animation (because of their decision to declare Flash and related tech. as banned technology on iOS), they were very much an anything goes site for various mediums (ie. a wild-west site not recommended for anyone under the age of 18 though there was no age gate).
Even now, animations and games playing directly in the browser is still not the same as it once was, even with HTML 5 and WebGL opening up web publishing to all software that implements an exporter (no longer making it a choice between Macromedia/Adobe or Java).
Before Apple rang the death knell of the golden age of browser gaming and animation (because of their decision to declare Flash and related tech. as banned technology on iOS),
Steve Jobs correctly predicted that the majority of internet browsing would soon be taking place on a capacitive touch screen devices
and Flash, with its computer “mouseover” dependent functionality, had to be supplanted by HTML5.
Even now, animations and games playing directly in the browser is still not the same as it once was
Indeed it is far BETTER now due to the Mass proliferation of broad band internet access infrastructure which (love it or hate it), has given rise to HD video streaming (Netflix etc.) and online multiplayer gaming at 60 FPS
and other “cloud based” services.
Before Migrating to 3D/CG, I was professional graphic designer
for 15 years which included the entire decade of the 1990’s
I was a Huge fan of the design tools
from Macromedia ,including Flash.
But sadly they seemed to think that the internet was going to be running on dial up modem connections ,on desktop PC’s forever ,thus taking their place in the ash bin of tech history.
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Personally, I hated Flash with a passion. Hated creating it, and it made the web a generally worse experience.
I wasn’t a major fan of everything Jobs did, but he got that one right.
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I am referring to the days where you had a lot of sites where games and animated media were embedded in the same way that images still are today, there were no apps or clients to download, no accounts required, no required use of PC disk space, ect… You could even enjoy them at school since it did not violate the restrictions placed on the use of the computers there.
How many sites like Homestarrunner exist today? When Flash was big you had a lot of fun sites with tons of interactive features, a lot of things today appear sterile in comparison in the name of security.
Flash had its issues, though it may have been more on Adobe’s part than the concept itself. The current technologies have allowed for the return of such sites, but they are not as common as they once were.
They were definitely some cool flash sites out there with arcade games, but I think they have remained in history simply due to how people interact with gaming now.
Everyone’s doing it with a phone app.
ETA: Sorry, I really went off topic here.
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I am referring to the days where you had a lot of sites where games and animated media were embedded in the same way that images still are today,
Right and it was horrible and imposed EXTREME limitations on your creative choices ,as a designer, because the media had to essentially be optimized to quickly “preload” at 56kbps
there were no apps or clients to download, no accounts required
Thus no user facing content control such as filtering out NSFW content etc.
Feel free to go fire up the “wayback machine” and go watch your favorite old sites fail to load on ”Geocities”
But ,if you please, this is a thread about a powerful character animation software that Blender users might want to consider. 
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