Basefount has released Animcraft v5.3, the latest update to its collaborative animation library and editor for 3D DCCs including 3ds Max, Maya, Blender, Unity and Unreal. Professionals working in animation, VFX, game development, and realtime engines will want to upgrade—just don’t skip pipeline testing before deploying in production.
What’s New in Animcraft 5.3?
Released June 2025, Animcraft v5.3 added these 3ds Max-specific animation cleanup tools:
Onion Skin viewport overlays for comparing poses
Motion curve optimization via redundant keyframe removal
Mesh topology conversion from triangles to quads
Additional refinements to polar vectors and bone shaping
Onion Skin: Keyframe Clarity
A new Onion Skin tool overlays multiple frames semi-transparently in 3ds Max’s viewport. This mimics traditional tracing-paper workflows, helping animators compare poses at a glance and fine-tune transitional movement.
Curve Optimization: Clean Data, Smoother Flow
Animcraft now auto-prunes redundant keyframes in motion and deformation curves. It’s ideal for tidying motion-capture or hand-animated data, lightening curve load and making playback and iteration more responsive.
Triangle-to-Quad Conversion: Mesh Topology Made Easy
A topology tool converts triangular faces into quads, easing the way for subdivision modeling, deformation and UV work. This ensures cleaner inputs for rigs and animation pipelines.
What Is Animcraft?
Animcraft is a standalone animation editor and cross-platform library system. It lets studios extract, edit, retarget and reuse animations across characters, tools and engines. It supports FBX, BVH, Mixamo, MMD and more. Animations are stored in .ace asset files, which preserve metadata and allow for inheritance across future projects.
Animcraft integrates with Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Unity, Unreal Engine, Substance, Cinema 4D and Mixamo. It includes bridge plugins and batch tools to eliminate repetitive DCC tasks. Rigging tools cover bipedal, facial, blendshape and bone workflows. Facial editing tools allow for non-linear editing and direct engine export.
Editions & Licensing
Standard Edition (approx. €240/year + tax) includes full animation re-targeting, rig conversion, a searchable animation library, preview thumbnails, Unreal asset prep, facial rigging, ribbon FX, and a multimedia library. Licenses are node-locked or floating.
Advanced Edition (approx. €570/year + tax) adds Maya/Max facial auto-rigging, Metahuman DNA editing, 3ds Max automatic ribbon/cartoon/body rig setup.
The optional Video Capture bundle offers 365 minutes/year of markerless video-based motion capture, processed locally via GPU. It includes smoothing, stabilization, and direct rig injection to any DCC.
Learn More in Motion
Basefount maintains an official YouTube tutorial playlist covering all major features of Animcraft, including animation retargeting, video capture, and engine integration. It’s a good place to verify compatibility before trying a tool in production.
Final Notes
Animcraft continues to be a practical addition for animation teams who need to unify mocap, keyframe, retargeting and asset management. 5.3’s additions make Max workflows more animator-friendly. As always, test thoroughly in your pipeline before production use.
