For those who do not know the tool: Cascadeur is a standalone 3D character animation application from Nekki, aimed at keyframe animation, AI-assisted posing and physics-based motion work. In practice, its niche is not “AI makes animation now”, thankfully, but “the software helps with the parts people usually fix at 2 AM while reconsidering their profession.”

Unreal Live Link

Cascadeur 2026.1 is a technical update. The release focuses on three areas that tend to determine whether an animation tool is genuinely useful or just very proud of itself: handoff to Unreal Engine, clearer scene rendering in the viewport, and less manual repair after the fact.

The biggest pipeline change is the new Live Link for Unreal Engine. Cascadeur’s documentation states that the plugin works with Unreal Engine 5.5 to 5.7 and Cascadeur 2026.1 or later. Installation is currently manual: ZIP packages for each supported Unreal version are unpacked directly into the Unreal Engine plugin folder. FAB distribution is planned for later; that is a modern way of saying “for now, please enjoy file paths.”

Filament

The second major change is the full switch to Filament for scene visualisation. According to the 2026.1 release notes, Filament is now the rendering engine used in Cascadeur for visualising scenes and provides the expected controls of a modern real-time renderer. Viewport upgrades are easy to undersell, but readable lighting and better scene feedback affect timing, spacing and posing decisions far more than marketing screenshots do. The release notes also state that switching to Filament fixed quad-mesh display issues on macOS, so this is not just a prettier viewport but also a more “stable” one. (Sorry for the very bad pun. Stable. Quad. And yes, it is time for the weekend.)

Root Motion is the new AI-assisted feature in this release, and the official wording is notably restrained. Cascadeur describes it as “a new generative tool” that produces animations based on the character’s trajectory. The workflow starts with a rough draft motion and at least two keyframes, then runs the Root Motion command. That is a much healthier framing than the usual machine-learning mysticism. The animator still defines the setup. The software does not merely arrive in a robe and demand applause.

Cleanup

The cleanup side also gets useful attention. Collision Penetration Cleaning analyses an animation and removes intersections. Cascadeur notes that older scenes require rig regeneration for the tool to work correctly, whereas scenes created in 2026.1 work out of the box. Mildly inconvenient, yes. Still preferable to hand-fixing every knee, elbow and floor contact.

AutoPosing and physics tools also get more practical. Improved AutoPosing for quadrupeds is part of the release. Point Constraints now work in AutoPosing, and they are also taken into account in AutoPhysics and Ragdoll. Additional quadruped spine switching angles have been added in Settings. In plain production terms, that means better support for non-biped rigs and more reliable behaviour for constrained objects during assisted motion passes. Or, translated into the dialect of late-night animation cleanup, fewer props quietly leave the hand and pursue an independent career.

Cascadeur on physics, AI and control

The release also lands neatly next to Digital Production’s earlier interview with Cascadeur CTO Alexander Grishanin. In that February conversation, he described Cascadeur as a standalone 3D character animation DCC focused on physics-assisted keyframe animation, AutoPosing and AI Inbetweening, with FBX and USD support for engine-oriented pipelines.

He also explained that broader integration into standard production workflows had become a core development goal. Read against that background, 2026.1 looks less like a feature heap and more like a continuation of the same agenda: better engine connectivity, better scene readability and more automation where it actually reduces labour. A rare case in which the new release more or less matches the old interview instead of contradicting it for sport.

Cascadeur 2026.1 release notes:
https://cascadeur.com/help/category/312

Cascadeur Live Link documentation:
https://cascadeur.com/help/category/268

Digital Production interview:
https://digitalproduction.com/2026/02/18/cascadeur-on-physics-ai-and-control/

The post Cascadeur 2026.1 adds Unreal Live Link, Filament rendering and AI root motion. first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München trains filmmakers in directing, cinematography, screenwriting, and production. Its VFX department, led by Prof. Jürgen Schopper, covers digital image creation and visual storytelling.

New mentor for VFX students

The Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München (HFF) is seeking a mentor in 3D computer animation to support students in its Visual Effects (VFX) focus area. The position begins on 1 May 2026 and is permanent at 50 percent of regular working hours (20 hours per week). Under the leadership of Professor Jürgen Schopper, the role involves mentoring students through all stages of 3D production, from modelling to rendering. Tasks include project support, workflow planning, and teaching practical skills in 3D computer animation and related software and hardware.

Skills and experience

Applicants should hold a relevant degree, such as in media design, media informatics, or creative technologies, or have equivalent professional experience. The position requires strong communication skills, independent work habits, and fluent German. Experience in higher education environments is preferred, as is interest in machine learning, volumetric capture, and their application in creative-technical contexts. Practical knowledge of Blender and/or Houdini is expected.

Conditions and benefits

The post offers a modern workplace within Munich’s Kunstareal district and access to a creative academic environment. Flexible working hours and partial home office options are available by agreement. Benefits include a staff canteen, good public transport connections, free parking in the underground garage, and the possibility of using the JobBike Bayern programme. The employment is permanent, part-time (50%), and compensated in accordance with pay group 10 of the German public service scale (TV-L). Salary estimates can be checked via the TV-L calculator.

Application and contact

Applications are open until 28 February 2026 via the HFF job portal. Content-related questions can be directed to Prof. Sinje Gebauer (vfx@hff-muc.de), while procedural inquiries should go to Juliane Kretschmer (j.kretschmer@hff-muc.de). HFF Munich explicitly values diversity and inclusion. Applicants with disabilities will be given preference when equally qualified.

As with all new positions and roles, candidates should assess the practical working conditions and institutional support before accepting an offer to ensure a sustainable match between teaching, production and artistic goals.

Original job posting at Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München careers portal
https://karriere.hff-muc.de/jobposting/bd4471285cbe481df72bf38ee7b515ca6215b8650

The post HFF Munich seeks new mentor for 3D animation first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

It is kind of a ridiculous idea to make a 3D animated short film all by yourself, particularly if you are a perfectionist and you do not want the result to lean on stylisation as a shortcut. I am Maxim, 25, from Germany. I spent five years creating my animated short film SEN with almost no budget and countless hours of work. This is a rewind of that adventure.

senshortfilm.com | YouTube | Bluesky | LinkedIn

SEN is a 3D animated short film made entirely by one artist. Built with Maya, Houdini, Nuke, and Substance Painter, the project combines procedural VFX, detailed hard-surface modelling, and full compositing in a solo production pipeline.

Where I Started

It was early 2020. Covid was still “that virus over there”, at least from a European perspective. I was studying Media Design at a small university in rural Germany. We were tasked with creating a concept for a creative project and executing it the following semester. I had already made a few student short films and many small 3D projects, so an animated short film was the obvious choice.

I started preproduction around February 2020 with vague ideas. Very early on, it became clear that the main character should be a robot, since I have always enjoyed hard-surface work much more than organic creatures or characters. There is something about rusty metal and subtle surface imperfections that speaks to me, and the challenge of bringing an object to life pushed me to get to work.

First Concepts and Story Iterations

I developed story ideas while concepting the protagonist and environment. The first idea failed and was scrapped quickly. A second storyline centred on the protagonist and made it into the final film, though in altered form: a small mining robot escaping from a mining station it was attached to by cables. That original concept still survives in the final model as the cable stump detail on the robot’s back.

I was still not satisfied with the script. I wrote an entirely new screenplay in which the robot accidentally awakens a huge worm-like cave creature and traps it during a chase. Two months in, I had two robot stories, neither fully convincing.

A breakthrough came from a writing method I had learned in a lecture: asking “what if?” questions. The idea was to allow any thought, no filtering, no judgment, regardless of how implausible it seemed. What if he meets another robot? A mentor figure. What if the mentor is old and rusty? One further “what if?” unlocked the twist. I scrapped the previous storylines and wrote another script, the fourth or fifth by that point. I rewrote it dozens of times based on feedback from friends, my professors, and strangers online.

Rewriting and Planning

While rewriting, I planned the environment and visual logic: the portal design, the planet’s material identity, the crashed spaceship in an icy desert, and how the robot arrived there. Some answers carried over from earlier versions, and others were reworked to fit the new narrative. By mid-2020, the film’s core story and setting had stabilised.

Inspiration: Proof That Solo Is Possible

The new plot increased scope: large environments, distant views, FX, and more animation. I doubted whether I could finish it alone. I found Chris Jones’s blog, who made an animated short film in the early 2000s called “The Passenger”. Reading his production notes was the reality check I needed: if he could do it on early-2000s hardware, I could at least attempt it on modern technology.

Animatic: Solving the Edit Before Final Shots

In parallel with story development, I finished the robot concept, rigged it, and built basic set pieces. Once the script was ready, I created the first animatic. That first version was the hardest because it meant building cameras, scenes, and cuts from a blank slate, knowing none of it would appear in the final render. It felt like throwing time away, but it was necessary.

A total of 13 animatic versions and regular feedback rounds shaped edit and shot layout over the span of about a year, with production starting after the first few months. For an animated project like SEN, much of the final edit is effectively resolved in previz. My last animatic layout and the final edit are almost identical in shot lengths and rough camera positioning.

Discipline: The Real Production Infrastructure

The hardest part of a solo short is not a specific tool or technique. It is continuity. Many people abandon projects of this size, and I came close to doing so more than once. I want to share some tricks that I’ve used to keep myself going.

My favourite strategy is breaking tasks down into steps so small that your brain cannot argue with them. Some mornings my first task was simply “open the software.” Completing that gave a tiny dopamine reward and reduced friction.

Accountability was another tactic, the “sledgehammer method” of motivation: tell EVERYONE you are making the project. If you care about your reputation, you will feel pressure to deliver because people keep asking for progress. This comes with mental health risk, so I would only recommend it once you have fully committed. Routine mattered as well. Habits beat procrastination, and discipline is physical. Exercise kept me under pressure: daily jogging and daily workouts. I overdid it a bit and do not recommend the exact dosage – my knees and back had opinions at 25. Still, it helped.

Similarly, it can also really help to get someone else invested into the project. When Stuart Michael Thomas joined me in 2022 and scored the movie, that was a major motivation boost. No way can I not finish the film now that this amazing professional had spent so much time and effort on making a score for it! Thank you again, Stu!

The Schedule

About one year into the project (January 2021), I wrote a schedule that now reads as slightly unhinged: up at 6, tutorials and books until 9, then work until 9 PM. Weekends free. Later, I shifted to 8 PM plus Saturday hours. This was what it took to make speedy progress, but with additional responsibilities, this pace was not sustainable. There were weeks and months with little progress. During a three-month internship in Hamburg in 2021, I paused the film entirely. Once I started working full-time (late 2022), progress slowed dramatically. Luckily, I had pushed hard the previous years, and SEN was already 60 to 70 per cent complete by then.

Technical Details

Workflow: Iteration and Feedback as a System

One key lesson: everything starts out looking bad until you iterate enough. Finding things wrong with an asset, shot or edit, then figuring out how to improve it is the main creative challenge. After that, execution just comes down to time plus technical knowledge.

Feedback was critical. Every time a piece reached a somewhat presentable state, I would collect notes from professors, friends, family, and online communities. Feedback improved the film and taught me why certain choices worked or did not.

I want to give a big shout-out to Melanie Beisswenger here, who was my professor when I started the project. She also became my bachelor’s thesis critic, and even after graduation, she continued to give valuable notes and feedback. Another big shoutout goes to Nikolai Neumetzler, another brave soul who joined to judge my bachelor’s thesis and also stuck around to give feedback afterwards. Also, he even animated one of the shots! Thank you, Melanie and Nik, for your contributions to the project!

Assets: Building a World That Holds Up in Closeups

Asset building was a comfortable area for me. I had experience from university projects, building most assets myself, so modelling, texturing, and shading were familiar territory. The two characters remained informally named “robot” and “rusty”. Environment assets followed. Everything went through multiple iterations across months or years. Some assets were hand-modelled, others sculpted, and some kitbashed.

Only a few assets were purchased online: lava rocks for the first shot background, a large cliff dividing the environment (internally called “DivHill”), and base geometry for the wreckage.

The wreckage relied heavily on procedural shaders, but I extracted the large surfaces, created quick UVs, and painted custom textures in Substance Painter. Photogrammetry scans also entered the pipeline. Snow clumps were based on scans I made in 2020 by spraying water on flour and clumping it.

Scene assembly strategy

Assets were loaded into shots as referenced Maya files. Most were placed in world space so they arrived in correct relative positions. I was not consistent with this rule, and the assets that did not follow it created extra “fun” in transform matching.

The crater asset rework

The crater went through major redevelopment. The first version used a complex procedural shader, leading to slow renders without holding up in close-ups. Later, I rebuilt it using tiling textures blended via hand-painted masks. Displacement remained complex but delivered good base detail. For close-ups, it was still not enough. I created mud clump assets from rock models found online, resculpted them in ZBrush to read as mud, textured them in Substance Painter, and then manually placed them to enhance detail and hide underlying weaknesses.

Placement was tricky because edges could break the illusion of a continuous surface. A lot more of those mudclumps were later added per-shot in the lighting stage. SEN ended up with 10 major assets, 5 minor assets (including snow and mud clumps) and roughly 87 million triangles across assets combined (excluding certain FX caches treated as assets)

Rigging: A Referenced Maya System for Swappable Geometry

Rigging is not my strongest suit, so it took time to arrive at a reliable setup for the characters. I started with the robot while developing the script and animatics, again following an iterative approach. Both the robot and Rusty rigs were based on Maya referencing, using two geometry workfiles per character: a low-resolution proxy for animatic, animation, and previews, and a high-resolution version with shaders and final detail.

The low-res and high-res files mirrored naming exactly, meaning any object in low-res existed in high-res under the same name. There was no hierarchy in the geometry files, with all geometry sitting at the root level of the outliner. The rig workfile referenced the low-res geometry and then created the hierarchy and control groups that the rig moved. Because naming matched, the low-res geometry could be swapped for high-res cleanly. Choosing robots avoided organic deformation, skin weighting, and the related rig complexity.

The robot rig took roughly six months to be fully rigged, although usable versions existed much earlier for animatic work. The biggest technical challenge was wheel rotation driven by translation. This breaks when the character turns 180 degrees, as wheels begin spinning backwards.

World Vectors to the rescue!

The solution was a world-vector wheel rig setup found via a tutorial after considerable time trying to solve it independently. The system compares the previous and current frame’s world-space positions and adjusts the wheel rotation based on the delta. The arms are driven by an IK setup, while all remaining controls operate in FK. The wheels include a suspension setup that drives the spring, damper, and gear rotations at the correct ratios and reacts inversely when the body banks.

For ground interaction, I considered constraining the wheels to the surface but ultimately chose to animate wheel height manually across all shots to retain control. In many cases, managing the amount of ground intersection was important for later FX work. For Rusty, large parts of the robot rig could be duplicated and adjusted rather than rebuilt from scratch.

How SEN Got a Professional Score

In mid-November 2020, after months of animatic iterations, I began planning the music. The film has no dialogue, so the score carries a large share of the narrative load. I posted on r/composer with the title “Looking for Shortfilm Score (Paid)”, offering $100 as a starting point for negotiation and sharing the animatic along with work-in-progress assets.

Stuart Michael Thomas, a professional composer, got in touch and offered to score the film on the condition that the money be donated to a charity instead. He worked on major studio franchises such as Iron Man, Avengers, and Fast & Furious. His involvement was creatively transformative and kept me motivated through the later stages of production.

Animation Process: Blocking to Spline Without Losing Your Mind

For me, animation is fun for about two weeks. After that, it becomes repetitive. Fortunately for me, there was a boatload of other tasks on my to-do list, so for most shot,s I could allow myself to take breaks from animating every few weeks and do other tasks. The general approach was consistent across shots:

• Set up the scene.
• Load the rig.
• Load or build low-res proxy environment geometry.
• Import camera from previz and optionally import robot from animatic as reference.
• Create a blocking pass.

Pose-first blocking

I often lay out key poses on single frames first to avoid having to deal with curve tangents immediately. I would stack the key poses in the first 10 frames of the shot, with keys on all controls, even if a control did not move. On a typical shot, I spent half a week refining poses, then spaced them out for timing and added in-between poses. Feedback cycles followed. I stayed in blocking because big changes are easiest there. Late in blocking, I retimed sections aggressively and began refining body parts independently. All of these blocking passes were done without any interpolations. This allowed me to craft strong key poses and lay a solid foundation.

The spline crash phase

When I finally splined, the shot entered the “crappy phase”. No matter how solid the blocking looked, the first spline pass always felt like rediscovering animation curves for the first time. The shot that previously held together suddenly looked broken, and the amount of work ahead became unclear. To stay sane during splining, I refined shots in 20- to 80-frame chunks, polishing one section at a time before moving on. This workflow repeated across all 11 shots.

Lighting: Making Snow Read and Renders Happen

Once motion worked, I moved into lighting, which had its own technical friction. Lighting robots differs from lighting faces, and classic portrait lighting rules apply differently. Doing lighting in Maya was also challenging for morale. Today I would likely light in Houdini, but switching mid-project was not feasible.

Early on, I created a “master light rig” – basically just a Maya file with a Skydome, directional Sunlight and an area light to fill in shadows. This was the starting point for all shots. I always made adjustments to these lights and added further shot-specific ones.

The snow problem and the cloud shadow solution

Snow is tricky. In photos, it often becomes a blown-out flat white field unless shadows create form. Shot 5, the exposition crater shot, forced the learning: cloud shadows. I created large grid meshes and drove opacity with noise textures to simulate clouds, then manually positioned them to cast landscape shadows.

These cloud shadows also make a landscape feel larger. But Iteration still ruled: light-by-light adjustments repeated until the shot held together, or Maya crashed and erased progress. Subsurface Scattering was used a lot for all the snow and some plastic parts of the robot, but the heaviest passes were probably the volumetric FX elements in the crater.

Batch rendering automation

A key productivity tool was a Python script I wrote to generate and execute .bat files using Maya’s batch render command. In a display of unjustified ambition, I christened it “Renderfarm.py”. It also allowed me to limit render threads, so I could keep working while renders ran. Sometimes, renders ran in the background while I played games with friends, and I complained about frame rates as if it were anyone else’s fault.

FX: Houdini-First, With Strategic Cheats

FX is my favourite part of the pipeline: technical, varied, and rewarding. The story allowed for a lot of FX work, which was at least part of the reason for my excitement.
SEN includes smoke, snow and mud trails, snowfall, water droplets, ash, portal FX, stylized portal travel FX, and a timelapse decay effect for rusting metal. I started some FX in Maya (snowfall and ash from wreckage) but moved most FX to Houdini, which I had begun learning in early 2020. The film’s icicles were among my first Houdini projects, built as a procedural generator.

Smoke pipeline

The fire in the wreckage was faked using flicker-animated area lights and 2D elements in comp, while smoke was simulated in Houdini and exported as VDB sequences for rendering in Maya. The film uses two smoke passes: an older simulation visible in the wide crater introduction in shot 5, and a re-simulated version created in 2024 for the closer crater shots.

Portal FX construction

I wrote a creative description of the portal effect before implementation to define visual intent. I built two circular volumetric base elements by emitting particles from a sphere in one direction and giving them a 10-second lifespan to form a line. Then, bending the line into a circle, and emitting smoke from particles, once before and once after bending.

From these two bases, I created 15 elements total. Many were particle-based and relied on geometry-based SOP operations to bend or deform finished simulations. Some layers used advection by the base volumes.
The main plasma effect consisted of: Two circular particle elements, a third supporting particle element and finally a geometric particle layer resembling a UI, discovered through experimentation. Activation-specific elements included lightning strikes made in Maya using a rigged curve, plus two Houdini activation particle elements.

Environment interaction passes included two particle elements, four volumetric elements and two volumetric elements converted to polygons for heat distortion in compositing. I documented these FX in detail for my bachelor’s thesis, but that exceeds the scope here.

Compositing: AOV-Driven Look Development in Nuke

I broke renders down into multiple layers, which allowed selective re-renders of only parts of a shot. This was crucial without access to a dedicated render farm. Each layer included a full set of AOVs such as diffuse, specular, SSS, and others, enabling extensive look development in Nuke. I did not separate lights into light categories, as I did not yet know how to combine material channels and light categories in a single setup. As a result, lighting had to be locked before final rendering. Whenever possible, I fixed issues in comp to avoid re-rendering. Some of these workarounds made the Nuke scripts heavy and unstable, with crashes that occasionally halted progress.

How SEN Got Me to London

In 2022, living in Hamburg, I finished my bachelor’s degree, using the main shot of the film as the practical component. I was now officially finished with studying and ready to join the scary, exciting world of being a professional artist. With a reel largely built from SEN shots, I applied to multiple places, including Framestore’s Launchpad internship. I assumed I was not ready. To my surprise, I was invited to three online interviews.

Framestore struggled to place me because true generalism is rare, and it didn’t help that I was not certain what my strongest skill was. The interviews went well, then silence, then the email that changed everything: not an internship, but an offer for a Junior Generalist position. SEN had made an impression.
I moved to London, where I work at Framestore to this day (currently in my fourth year). Being flexible as a generalist helped to get some stability during strikes and broader industry turbulence, though my main focus continues to be FX work.

Reworks: Outgrowing Your Own Past Work

Long projects create a problem: you improve faster than your older shots. In 2021, I was proud of the teaser shots. By 2023, as an entry-level professional, those shots looked weak. That added rework load on top of new shots. Reworks included improved lighting, additional FX sims, environment cleanup, and better composition. Everything required re-rendering, pushing my PC hard for months. Flat-rate electricity helped me and devastated y landlord. The most reworked element was the crater asset, originally built in autumn 2020 and later rebuilt multiple times.

The main shot was also reworked. It was finalised in early 2022 due to time constraints on the bachelor’s thesis, which forced shortcuts and messy scripts. Revisiting it in 2024 required cleanup before progress could be made. Reminder: work as clean as time allows, because you may return years later.

Sound FX: Handing Off to Company3 Connections

Sound FX was unfamiliar territory. I built temporary SFX for teasers, but wanted professional work for the final film. Colleagues at Framestore connected me to people at Company3, a Framestore subsidiary focused on post-production. I allocated a roughly 1k budget, and they produced sound FX. Being on the client side was stressful because I had to give notes outside my expertise, but the team was strong, and I trusted them. They delivered an Atmos mix. I hope I implemented it correctly and did not break it in the edit…

Cut Content: What Did Not Make It

Several planned elements were cut to keep the film readable and the workload under control. Heavy snowfall across the entire film was reduced, as dense snowflakes would have obscured the environments and significantly complicated compositing due to overlap with smoke, ash, and portal effects. Light snowfall remains in the early shots, while the crater sequences use none.

A half-frozen waterfall never progressed beyond concept and RnD. It added visual complexity without contributing to the story, so further work on it was dropped. A Maya nParticle setup for snow landing on the robot and melting into droplets came close to working, then collapsed under technical instability and was cut as well. While this could likely have been rebuilt later in Houdini, doing so would have required additional renders and strict continuity tracking across shots, making it impractical at that stage.

Release: From Festival Run to Online Premiere

Over the course of 2025, SEN screened at six festivals. It did not win any awards, but that was never the objective. The goal was to find out whether I could complete a project of this scale, enjoy the process, and possibly inspire others to start their own long-form personal projects. Anything beyond that was a bonus.

At the time of writing, I am preparing the online release. Marketing an online release is real work and easily the least enjoyable part of making a film: tailoring formats for different platforms, writing captions, and optimising for reach. Chatbots help with hashtags and surface-level optimisation, but they do not solve questions of taste or authenticity. Feedback from festival screenings was consistently positive, and it will be interesting to see how the film is received online. The public release link is here: Have a look on Youtube

Alongside this, Melanie Beisswenger suggested telling the story of the little robot further in the Digital Production, which means the article you are reading right now.

Will I Do Another One?

People have asked me about sequels or another animated short. Currently, there are no plans for further animation projects, since I want to try my hand at live action next. I miss having a personal project, but the next one will not be solo.

Should You Make a Film by Yourself? Is University Worth It?

If you are passionate, you should pursue it. The work requires time, dedication, discipline, and craft. You will not enjoy it if you do not love the process, but if you do, it can give your work direction and meaning.

University is a double-edged sword. It can be valuable for networking, structure, and protected time to learn, especially when supported by loans or grants. In Germany, student support can reduce financial pressure compared to other countries. You could learn everything online if you are disciplined and organised. My degree was in Media Design, a broad programme covering many aspects of media. It teaches fundamentals, but personal projects remain essential for building a portfolio. Do not expect to follow a curriculum and receive job offers automatically. A bachelor’s degree can help with visas and legal frameworks, but in media industry hiring, it carries limited weight. In practice, skills matter more than formal qualifications.

During university, I steered projects toward 3D and VFX whenever possible and reduced effort on areas less relevant to my goals, such as print. Making a solo film strengthened my generalist skills, at the cost of deeper specialisation. Demand for generalists may grow, but that is hard to predict. Generalists can be difficult to position, as their value is not always immediately obvious, but they often act as the connective tissue that holds projects together.

SEN taught me that passion projects are possible if you love the process. Make something awesome.

The post How I Spent Five Years Making a Solo 3D Film first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Autodesk’s Maya 2026.3, now available through the Autodesk Account portal, delivers substantial mid-cycle additions. The update introduces new animation management tools, Bifrost rigid bodies, expanded USD support, and deeper integration with Autodesk Flow 0.11.0.

Animation: Channel Sets and contextual tools

Animators gain new control with Channel Sets in the Graph Editor, which allow grouping and sharing collections of channels for cleaner scene management. A new toggle lets artists hide or show pins, shifting focus toward organised channel groups. Animate in Context now includes a demo project showcasing its capabilities, and the MotionMaker Editor gains a contextual right-click menu for faster access to character key operations.

Technical rigging: Dynamic Geometry Attributes

Dynamic Geometry Attributes give technical artists per-vertex analysis tools to identify rigging problem areas and improve deformation quality. They can also drive procedural effects such as animated wrinkles. Example scenes are available in the Content Browser under Animation > Dynamic Geometry Attributes.

Camera Sequencer: refined shot creation

The Camera Sequencer now offers a more intuitive and flexible shot-creation workflow. Autodesk describes this as an expansion of existing functionality rather than a major overhaul, focusing on smoother editing and management of camera sequences.

LookdevX 1.10.0: refined look development

LookdevX 1.10.0 brings colour-management updates, improved generative-texture APIs, and clearer documentation. These refinements aim to stabilise the framework for shader and material development across pipelines.

USD 0.34: new Asset Resolver

USD for Maya 0.34 introduces the Asset Resolver, simplifying asset loading and improving portability between different production environments. The update refines asset referencing and streamlines project structure handling.

Bifrost 2.15.0.0: rigid bodies debut

Bifrost 2.15.0.0 delivers its first implementation of rigid-body dynamics, adding simulation capabilities for solid objects alongside the existing fluid and aerosol solvers. It also brings fracturing, Boolean modelling tools, and a range of general stability improvements.

Rendering: Arnold for Maya 5.5.4

Arnold integration advances to MtoA 5.5.4, adding a new Inference imager, enhancements to Global Light Sampling, and various bug fixes.

Autodesk Flow 0.11.0 integration

Flow 0.11.0 now installs automatically with Maya 2026.3, connecting Maya to Autodesk’s collaborative ecosystem. It supports Animate in Context and other Flow-based features through a background desktop service.

The post Autodesk launches Maya 2026.3 & Creative 2026.3 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The open-source web app Mesh2Motion, developed by Scott Petrovic, has released Update 6, introducing the new Explore Library and overhauled skeleton rigs. The Explore page now serves as the default landing screen, allowing users to preview and switch between skeletons and animations instantly, no manual rig configuration required. This change simplifies testing and makes the application far more accessible for newcomers and professionals looking to evaluate rig behaviour before importing their own 3D models.

The Explore Library displays all available animation clips for humans, quadrupeds, birds, and dragons. Artists can preview motion directly in the browser, bypassing the previous requirement to manually attach rigs to meshes. Those who want to use their own assets can still switch to the Create page to import 3D models and connect them to existing rigs.

Smarter Skeletons and Rebuilt Rigs

Update 6 overhauls all control rigs. Petrovic rebuilt every skeleton using a more advanced Blender 2.5 rig structure, separating driver bones (for animation control) from deformation bones (for mesh shaping). This separation improves IK (inverse kinematics) behaviour, constraint setups, and general deformation quality. The result is greater flexibility when posing or animating directly within Mesh2Motion’s browser interface.

Additional bones were added to enhance deformation, including stomach bones for dragons and quadrupeds and wing bones for birds. Expressive mouth rigs were also added for birds, dragons, and quadrupeds, expanding facial animation possibilities. Petrovic credits tutorial resources such as Rich Stubbs’ YouTube channel for helping refine the rigging process.

Interface Tweaks and Animation Additions

A series of smaller quality-of-life updates accompany the rig rebuild. These include floor transparency for visual clarity in animations that move below the ground plane, and a transform-space toggle that switches between world and local rotation. The human skeleton gains a wider A-pose slider range for improved T-pose correction.

The animation library itself now includes new fox and quadruped motions created using the revised rigs, alongside a reworked human animation labelled “tired”. A small typographic fix corrects the spelling of “Quaternius” in the contribution guide—an example of Petrovic’s attention to detail.

Current Feature Set

Mesh2Motion provides a web-based animation workflow built entirely in the browser. Users can preview skeletons, manipulate rigs, and test deformations without any installation or plugin dependencies. It supports common 3D file formats, real-time playback, and pose editing.

Control rigs are based on Blender source files, enabling familiar IK controls and constraint behaviours found in desktop DCC tools. Artists can quickly toggle transform modes, refine poses, and view deformations across human, animal, and fantasy skeletons. As of Update 6, the app includes a growing library of pre-rigged skeletons and animations, offering a streamlined environment for rig testing and educational use.

Ongoing Development

Petrovic notes that future work may involve expanding the animation library or producing tutorial walkthroughs for contributors. Mesh2Motion remains a solo open-source project and is freely accessible online. Users are encouraged to test deformations and playback performance before integrating it into production workflows.

The post Mesh2Motion Update 6 Adds Explore Library and Rebuilt Rigs first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Ten months after its iOS debut, Cascadeur Mobile has finally arrived for Android devices on Google Play. The AI-assisted 3D animation software shrinks its desktop workflow down to smartphones and tablets, making it possible to keyframe between train stops or tweak motion curves while waiting for your coffee order.

The Cascadeur Mobile trailer on YouTube demonstrates how desktop-class features have been re-engineered for finger taps and swipes. Inspiration may strike anywhere; now it also fits in your pocket, complete with AR previews right on the kitchen table.

Key Features

Cascadeur Mobile leans heavily on AI helpers. AutoPosing takes care of body positions while finger controllers stop hands from looking like broken forks. AI Inbetweening smooths out transitions between keyframes, which means less manual clicking and more pretending the result was “intentional.”

Physics joins the ride as well. AutoPhysics handles natural body dynamics, and Secondary Motion adds the subtle wiggles that make movement believable without you having to fake it. Paired with Video Reference support and an AR Mode, animators can drop characters into real-world surroundings — ideal for finally placing a ninja in your office chair.

And for anyone who enjoys the deep dive, Cascadeur Mobile still brings the heavy artillery: Trajectories, Ghosts, Copy Tool, Tween Machine, IK/FK Interpolation, Interval Edit Mode, light customization, and prop manipulation. There’s even Unbaking, which cleans up baked animation data — essentially an undo button for that “just export it and fix later” moment.

Licensing

Cascadeur Mobile is free to download with some limitations. Unlocking the full feature set is possible in two ways:

• Cascadeur Pro desktop subscribers: free login access to the mobile version
• Mobile-only subscription: approx. $50/year (price varies by taxes), available as an in-app purchase

Both Android and iOS editions are aligned with the latest desktop release, so your pipeline can stay consistent — assuming you want to animate across phone, tablet, and workstation without losing your mind.

Availability

• Download Cascadeur for Android
• Cascadeur official site

Both Android and iOS editions are aligned with the latest desktop release, so your pipeline can stay consistent — assuming you want to animate across phone, tablet, and workstation without losing your mind.

The post Cascadeur Mobile 3D Animation Now on Android first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

ICE.Art returns on 1–2 October 2025. The event runs as an online-only conference, with sessions scheduled between 5 pm and 8 pm CET. That places it outside of most production hours, designed so professionals can join after work or catch up from different time zones without losing project time.

Organiser vrbn positions ICE as a conference “for everybody working directly or indirectly on fictional or real-world 3D worlds.” Unlike broad-spectrum industry fairs, ICE focuses tightly on environments and their technical and artistic context.

Digital environments in film, TV, games, and visualisation are rarely just scenery. They anchor storytelling, guide interaction in games, and stress-test rendering pipelines. ICE’s agenda covers the full stack: from concept art and visual direction to game level layout, pipeline efficiency, and the legal or personal aspects of working life in production. The mix makes ICE relevant not only for environment artists but also for TDs, compositors, shader developers, and realtime specialists whose work intersects with large-scale 3D datasets.

Michael Shelton: VFX Supervisor and Director

Michael Shelton (M. Shelton Supervision) is a Los Angeles–based VFX supervisor and second unit director. He started in creature workshops and practical effects before moving into 2D and 3D digital work. His credits include Game of Thrones, Winning Time, Westworld, The Mandalorian, Mary Poppins Returns and many others.

Shelton also worked on game cinematics, music videos and commercials for Bungie, Activision, Apple, Porsche, Mercedes Benz, and more. Known for a hands-on approach across matte painting, compositing, realtime workflows and practical effects, he combines broad craft skills with a measured view on industry shifts. His FMX 2024 talk on Westworld drew attention for its humour and technical scope.

Jay H. Patel: Unreal Specialist

Jay H. Patel (Jay-H) is a senior Unreal Engine artist and Unreal Engine Fellow. Self-taught, he has 14+ years of experience in realtime technology, focusing on cinematics. Patel’s work spans film production, automotive and architectural visualisation, VR, and realtime cinematics, with a focus on pushing Unreal Engine into cinematic territory.

Faruk Heplevent: CGI Photography Pioneer

Faruk Heplevent (The Scope) is founder, CEO and creative director of the Hamburg-based CGI studio The Scope. Starting as a photographer in the 1990s, he founded The Scope in 2007, coining the term “CG Photography” to describe fully computer-generated, camera-grade imagery.

The studio is a key player in automotive visualisation, delivering campaigns for Audi, BMW, Tesla, NIO, Genesis, Volkswagen and Toyota. Heplevent’s R&D work led to Scope City, a procedural city generator for photoreal customisable urban environments. His talks often highlight the convergence of CGI, realtime engines, and AI.

Sam Martino: Games and Preservation

Sam Martino (Dogwood Gaming) founded his indie studio in 2016, releasing four games on Steam since. Beyond game development, Dogwood Gaming expanded into digital historic preservation. Since 2024, Martino also teaches at Bristol Community College, focusing on entry pathways into the game industry for students.

Why ICE Matters

For environment specialists, ICE provides direct relevance. For others, the value lies in seeing how environment work shapes pipelines across departments. Examples include architectural realism that affects lighting and compositing, or streaming technologies that enable new delivery formats for interactive 3D. The evening schedule also reduces friction. Attendees do not lose production hours to sit through sponsor pitches or expo halls. ICE positions itself as a compact alternative to the large-scale conference calendar.

Community Focus

Since its start, ICE has prioritised access over spectacle. There is no expo floor and fewer marketing launches. Instead, the content leans on production stories, workflows, and first-hand lessons. Talks that discuss dead ends or tool limitations are part of the appeal: they reflect the daily reality of artists, TDs, and supervisors working under pressure.t a mix of visual showcases, pipeline talks, and the usual dose of production survival advice. vrbn highlights that talks will again touch on career development. Given the current state of VFX labour discussions worldwide, that may be as relevant as the technical sessions.

The post ICE.Art 2025: Virtual Worlds Meet After Hours first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Autodesk has announced a set of AI-driven features for Maya, marking the company’s first direct integration of artificial intelligence into its flagship 3D tool. The additions, presented at AU 2025, centre on generative AI assistants and a new AI-powered animation tool.

The AI Assistants are designed as conversational agents inside Maya’s interface. Autodesk states that they can generate textures, 3D assets, lighting setups, and animation snippets from text prompts. The company positions these assistants as optional helpers that can be invoked when needed, not as replacements for manual workflows. At press time, Autodesk has not specified which generative models underpin these features, or how data is handled during asset generation.

The Graph Assist tool targets animation workflows. Autodesk describes it as a system that interprets natural language commands such as “make this motion loop seamlessly” or “add anticipation before the jump” and then applies the corresponding animation curve adjustments in Maya’s Graph Editor. The exact scope of supported commands and the degree of manual clean-up required remain unclear.

Both features are slated for preview in Maya later this year. Autodesk has not committed to a release date for general availability.

Autodesk’s wider AI strategy

Beyond Maya, Autodesk is promoting AI as a cross-platform strategy. In its official announcement, the company frames AI as part of its long-term plan to integrate generative and assistive systems across Autodesk Flow{:target=”_blank”}, its connected media and entertainment platform.

Autodesk highlights four pillars:

1. Assistants: context-aware helpers embedded in tools.
2. Graph Assist: language-driven animation adjustments.
3. Generative asset creation: models producing textures, props, and environments.
4. Automation: background tasks such as clean-up, retargeting, or optimisation.

The vendor states that its AI development follows “responsible AI” principles, including transparency and artist control. However, specific details on training datasets, model providers, or compute infrastructure are not disclosed. Autodesk emphasises that AI will remain optional, with human artists retaining final authority over creative decisions.

Between promise and production

Autodesk’s messaging is consistent: AI should reduce repetitive work and allow artists to spend more time on creative tasks. However, concrete performance data, integration details, and production-tested case studies are not yet available.

Notably, Autodesk has not addressed licensing implications for AI-generated assets, nor has it clarified whether generated content is considered royalty-free for commercial projects. These are critical questions for production teams.

Conclusion

Maya’s AI Assistants and Graph Assist represent Autodesk’s first visible move into AI-assisted 3D creation. The broader strategy signals that similar tools will spread across Autodesk’s media and entertainment products.

As always, production environments demand stability and predictability. Artists and studios should evaluate these AI features in controlled tests before adopting them for active projects.

The post Autodesk adds AI Assistants to Maya (and beyond) first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Virtual Reality is slowly becoming part of our reality, from video games and visualizations to art. Dan Franke is a VR storyteller who creates games and VR experiences. He talks about how VR can be used in your career and productions during our TD Meetup event.

Dan Franke will take you inside his creative process and show you how he uses Quill VR to craft immersive VR stories and turn ideas into visuals at lightning speed. He will explain how these techniques can be seamlessly incorporated into traditional 3D animation and previs workflows, making them a powerful tool for rapid iteration and creative problem solving.

About Dan

Dan Franke is a Stuttgart-based VR artist, director, and educator who swapped the safe roads of Porsche and TV gigs for the wilder ride of immersive storytelling, and he hasn’t looked back since. After film school at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and co-directing a children’s series, he stumbled into Goro Fujita’s Quill workshop in 2018, had his “Eureka in 3D” moment, and basically decided never to touch polygons the boring way again. Since then, he’s co-founded Studio Syro, helped bring the first VR series Tales from Soda Island to life, led Quill artistry on projects like Namoo, and launched Spacelime Studios, where painting in VR looks suspiciously like playing around but somehow produces award-winning work.

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And what wil happen at theTD-Meetup?

Dan will also demonstrate how Quill’s capabilities can be integrated with Maya, Blender or Houdini to extend into FX work. This session will transform your perception of VR, showing it not just as a medium to experience, but also as a powerful tool for creation.

Thursday, 11 September 2025 at 3 PM CET

The post TD-Meetup: Join us live, we talk about how VR Speeds Up Animation & Previz! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Alexander Richter.

Character Creator 5 (CC5) officially arrived on 27 August 2025, and this time Reallusion is putting the HD badge front and centre. Gone are the days when your assets lived somewhere between “game-ready” and “film-aspiring.” With a new HD Character Base (official page), CC5 can now scale from lightweight assets to subdivision-heavy models that survive close-up shots.

Subdivision is not just a toggle here: CC5 pushes mesh detail up to 16× denser than CC4, supporting 4K and 8K skin textures, displacement mapping, and an upgraded shader pipeline. You can freely switch between a game-ready mesh and a film-quality mesh without losing rigging, morphs, or animation compatibility.

“HD character bases bridge the gap between cinematic quality and real-time performance,” says Reallusion’s launch note. Translation: you don’t have to keep two separate character libraries anymore.

Facial Animation Gets a Brain Transplant

With CC5, facial animation is no longer an afterthought. The new HD Animation system (official page) introduces micro-expressions, corrective morphs, and constraint-based deformations, which together prevent the dreaded “clay-face” look.

Each facial expression now drives a deeper set of blendshapes, which can layer details like cheek tension, eyelid flutter, or asymmetric lip pulls. Corrective systems kick in automatically when you start stacking expressions. The result: characters can now smile without breaking their jawline.

To fully unlock this, iClone users need the latest Motion LIVE for iPhone and AccuFACE updates. Together, they stream high-fidelity facial mocap directly into CC5 rigs.

Beyond mocap, the HD Expression Profile adds a redesigned library of emotion presets, built to scale from subtle social cues to dramatic theatrical expressions. Artists can blend or customise them at sub-expression levels—controlling everything from nostril flares to jaw clench intensity. Importantly, these are layered on top of anatomical corrections, so stacking them will not collapse the mesh into noise.

CC5 also includes a new Sticky Lips System and Eyelid Constraint Engine, making phoneme-driven speech far more realistic. Lip movements now feature adhesion during closed-mouth consonants, while the eyelid system calculates squints and blinks based on eyeball rotation rather than simple linear morphs. Together with wrinkle-based displacement maps, these additions finally bring facial realism in line with the upgraded HD base mesh.

MetaHuman Compatibility: CC5 Learns the Language

One of the bigger headline changes: CC5 characters now share the same facial control structure and skeleton as MetaHuman. This means mocap data, animations, and expressions can be exchanged between MetaHumans and CC5 assets without retargeting hacks.

If your pipeline involves Unreal’s MetaHumans, you can now drop a CC5 character in, hand them the same mocap or audio-to-face data, and expect them to move in sync. CC5 even includes an HD Face Board, which mirrors MetaHuman’s control system, for one-to-one editing.

Meet ActorMIXER: DNA Splicing for CG-Characters

Reallusion calls it “next-gen character generation.” The rest of us can call it what it is: Frankenstein’s lab, but with sliders. ActorMIXER (official page) lets you non-destructively mix entire bodies, heads, or individual features from multiple characters.

Drag two characters into ActorMIXER, spin the Mixer Wheel, and you can blend their DNA into something new. ActorMIXER Pro unlocks even more: it can convert any character into a mixable source, generate randomised characters at scale, and export custom mixer assets for collaboration or reuse.

The Deluxe Bundle: Everything and the Kitchen Sink

CC5 is available standalone, but Reallusion also rolled out the CC5 Deluxe Bundle (official page), priced at $499. The bundle includes:

• Character Creator 5
• ActorMIXER Pro with Core Library (44 HD scanned heads across four ethnicities)
• HD Ultimate Morphs pack (fine-tuned morph sliders for body and face)
• HD Human Anatomy Set (12 full avatars with anatomical diversity, ready for ActorMIXER)

The key value here is the Core Library: scanning 44 heads independently would cost thousands. Bundled, they become mixable DNA inside ActorMIXER. The HD Ultimate Morphs add sub-surface detail like crow’s feet, lip asymmetry, and muscular tension—all slider-driven, and bakeable into normal maps for low-poly assets.

Pipeline Expansions: Maya, Marmoset, ZBrush, Blender, Unreal

No release is complete without pipeline updates. CC5 expands Auto Setup to cover Maya, Arnold and Marmoset Toolbag, joining the existing Blender, Unreal, and Unity bridges. That means shaders and rigs arrive pre-configured, saving the joyless task of re-wiring materials.

The Maya bridge in particular is a major milestone. Characters exported from CC5 arrive in Maya with Arnold-ready materials, subdivision levels intact, and displacement maps already hooked into the shader graph. For artists who prefer Arnold for cinematic rendering, this eliminates hours of manual material rebuilding. Reallusion states that skin shading, subsurface scattering, and even tearline and eye reflections are mapped correctly on export. For production pipelines already invested in Arnold, this makes CC5 a far more attractive option for film and episodic work.

What’s notable is that CC5 also passes on animation rigs without requiring conversion, meaning facial animation data and ActorMIXER variants can move directly into Maya. This is a shift from previous CC workflows, where much of the rigging had to be revalidated or rebuilt for Maya compatibility. Now, the bridge promises near one-to-one parity with what you see in CC5, making it viable as a character front-end for high-end rendering pipelines.

ZBrush support via GoZ continues, now with higher subdivision detail and wrinkle-to-displacement baking. Blender Auto Setup was updated to handle HD meshes in both Eevee and Cycles, complete with displacement and facial animation support. For Unreal, CC5 characters can now export with UE skeletons aligned to MetaHumans, making them immediately usable in UEFN projects. Live Link for iClone has been updated for UE 5.5/5.6, and includes a free HD Face Control panel for direct editing in-engine.

CC4 vs CC5: What Actually Changed?

Mesh & Detail

• CC4: Mid-poly base mesh, normal-map driven detail.
• CC5: HD base mesh, subdividable up to 16×, displacement and microdetail supported.

Facial Animation

• CC4: Basic blendshapes with limited corrective morphs.
• CC5: HD Expression Profile, Sticky Lips, Eyelid Constraints, displacement-based wrinkles.

Pipeline to Maya

• CC4: Manual material rebuilds in Maya, no Arnold-ready shaders.
• CC5: Arnold-ready shader graphs, displacement mapped, subsurface scattering intact.

MetaHuman Sync

• CC4: Retargeting required for animations.
• CC5: Skeleton and controls identical to MetaHuman, direct animation sharing.

Content Expansion

• CC4: Marketplace content, Ultimate Morphs pack.
• CC5: ActorMIXER + Core Library, HD Ultimate Morphs, HD Anatomy Set.

Final Verdict

Character Creator has always been a flexible mid-tier character tool. With CC5, it now has the foundations to sit comfortably alongside MetaHuman while still being production-friendly. ActorMIXER adds a dash of creative chaos, the Deluxe bundle fills the content pipeline, and the Auto Setup bridges remove friction. As always: test new workflows in production before committing.

And, while you are thinking about that: Here is a Playlist with tutorials to all the new features: Character Creator 5 Tutorials, so you have something to watch tonight. Enjoy!

The post Here’s Character Creator 5 — Now in Hero-Quality, MAya-Friendly, MetaHuman-Friendly, and Armed with ActorMIXER first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

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For those who won’t sit through a 2.5-hour livestream

SideFX used its Vancouver keynote to preview Houdini 21, a release positioned as its most production-ready to date. The actual launch is planned for the end of the month. The presentation was packed with feature demos, technical deep-dives, and just enough dry humour to keep the audience from slipping into a procedural trance. If you’d rather not commit an afternoon to watching the full video, here’s the condensed version. And as always with software development: while this looks great, many details can still shift before release.

Finishing what they started

Rather than debuting new frameworks, SideFX’s development mandate was to complete and stabilise existing toolsets, improve robustness, and raise ease of use. This approach has resulted in the largest number of features ever shipped in a Houdini version.

Several frameworks move from beta to production: Apex-driven rigging, animation and motion mixing in KinFX; the Copernicus framework for 2D/3D workflows; and the Vulkan-based viewport, now replacing OpenGL entirely. Established toolsets also received significant functional and usability upgrades, including Solaris, Karma XPU, and the MPM dynamics solver. Two older but widely used systems have been rebuilt: terrain erosion, and the muscle system, both delivering more physically accurate results and easier setup.

Machine learning with restraint

SideFX reiterated its measured approach to machine learning, aiming to augment procedural workflows without removing artistic control. In Houdini 21, ML features move from R&D to deployable tools, with applications such as corrective joint workflows and ML-trained deformers.

Animation and motion mixing upgrades

Houdini 21 introduces multiple animation updates: Ragdoll Tether constraints, Scene Animate Prop for destruction effects, Animation Catalog for reusable poses and clips, improved viewport controls, auto-offset constraint controls, and a Motion Mixer for non-linear blending without breaking IK.

KinFX rigging developments

KinFX gains an interactive drag-and-drop interface for rig components while retaining procedural depth. Hierarchy analysis supports retargeting to characters with different proportions. Houdini 21 also ships with Otto, a fully rigged biped asset with production-grade IK/FK blending and anatomical skeleton setups.

Integration with Epic Metahuman

In collaboration with Epic Games, SideFX has developed a forthcoming plugin for importing Metahuman characters into Houdini for further animation, simulation, lighting, and rendering.

CFX: Otus soft tissue solver and beyond

The GPU-accelerated Otus soft tissue solver delivers FEM-like quality at higher speed, supporting combined muscle and tissue simulation, fascia generation, robust collision handling, and built-in skin sliding. A muscle transfer toolkit allows reuse of Otto’s setup on new characters, even non-human.

ML-trained deformers and sculpt-over-time

ML-trained deformers replicate full CFX simulations in real time, significantly improving over bone deforms. Sculpt-over-time enables shot-specific fixes within the motion mixer’s non-linear system.

Modelling, UV, and baking enhancements

Quad Remesh improvements, Unsubdivide SOP, UV Flatten from Points, and rebuilt baking workflows (for Karma and COPs) now share a GPU raytracing backend for speed and consistency.

Test before deployment

SideFX states Houdini 21 tools are designed for production use, but as with any pipeline change, artists should validate new workflows in their own environments before committing to shows. And until the final build ships, some of these features may still shift — it is software, after all.

The post Houdini 21: SideFX pushes for production readiness across the CG pipeline first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Mercenaries Engineering has released Rumba 2.0, their latest update to the Maya-compatible character animation tool. This Parisian software house promises that Rumba 2.0 is “the most significant update yet,” but what exactly has changed—apart from the version number?

Real-Time, Really

Rumba 2.0 doubles down on real-time performance. Animators get immediate feedback and fast playback, even in heavily populated or complex scenes. This reduces the ritualistic waiting for previews and renders—no more staring at spinning wheels and wondering about your life choices.

Layers, Layers, Layers

The non-destructive animation layer workflow means users can revise and experiment with less anxiety. Teams can work on different animation layers at the same time, without stepping on each other’s toes or corrupting original data. For anyone who has lost hours untangling overwritten animation, this is less a feature than a minor miracle.

Direct Manipulation and Smarter Tools

Rumba 2.0 gives animators direct manipulation of geometry for posing, including pose mirroring and onion skinning. Onion skinning offers a visual ghost of previous and next frames, making timing and staging less of a guessing game. Other tweaks—like reversing keyframes or switching rotation order—are designed to make animation editing less tedious and more precise.

Sculpt Deformer and Dynamics

A standout: the sculpt deformer tool. This lets artists push geometry around directly in the viewport to fix deformations or tweak silhouettes, sidestepping the usual trip back to rigging or modeling. Animators also get dynamic controller behavior for FK chains—think tails, ropes, and secondary motion—allowing for physically plausible, overlapping motion without laborious manual keyframing.

New Scene Management: Sequencer and Outliner

The new Sequencer tool enables loading and editing of multiple documents at once, providing scene-wide management and a bird’s-eye view of continuity and pacing. The redesigned Outliner is promised to be more intuitive, making complex scene structures less opaque.

Pipeline: Plug and (Actually) Play

Pipeline compatibility is a major design focus. Rumba 2.0 supports USD, Alembic, and FBX. Users can import USD and Alembic assets with improved speed and support for animation and sculpt data. FBX camera animation is fully supported, including editable curves. Exporting animation in USD or Alembic is supported, and keyframed animation curves can make a round-trip back to Maya rigs—no loss of fidelity, no headaches.

There’s also improved support for Maya nodes via the mtorba plugin, and a more capable library that accepts ZIP-based asset bundles.

Two Hours to Learn, Days to Master

Mercenaries Engineering claims that a 2–3 hour training session is enough for animators to be productive with Rumba 2.0, aiming to keep onboarding costs (and staff grumbling) low.

In Production: WooD

For those who want proof, the short film “WooD” provides a recent production example. Rumba handled all animation, with Maya for rigging and Guerilla Render for final look development. A group of students from Creative Seeds handled rig conversion, with environment and compositing tasks also carried out in the academic setting—useful for benchmarking the tool in real-world, team-based scenarios.

Pricing and Availability

Rumba 2.0 is available now to registered users via Mercenaries Engineering’s download portal.

Test Before You Trust

As always, professionals are encouraged to test all new features in their actual production environment before updating mission-critical pipelines. Not every workflow fits every shop—and no feature is worth a missed deadline.

The post Rumba 2.0: No More Animators’ Elbow first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Reallusion’s free AccuRIG tool just made entry-level rigging and animation almost suspiciously simple. The new AccuRIG 2.0 release puts an AI-powered animation browser and preview window right inside the app, giving users instant access to over 4,500 ActorCore motion clips—without ever leaving the interface. Search and filter tools (including multilingual and style-based search) mean less scrolling, more animating.

One Ecosystem, Fewer Silos

Reallusion AccuRIG 2.0’s motion retargeting pipeline now blends even more smoothly into Reallusion’s wider ecosystem. Choose an animation from the ActorCore library, retarget it to your freshly rigged character, and export everything to FBX or USD with DCC-friendly presets for Blender, Cinema 4D, Maya, Unreal Engine, Unity, Omniverse, MotionBuilder, and 3ds Max. No extra fees, no surprise licensing. You just need a free ActorCore account.

Mixamo’s Got Company

Adobe’s Mixamo still offers fast auto-rigging and a motion library. But AccuRIG 2.0’s approach—a combined body/finger rig and in-app motion browsing—leaves fewer tabs open and more time for, well, actually animating. The update introduces a 19-joint rig (plus finger rig), whereas Mixamo continues to offer only a body rig and lacks internal animation browsing.

Steady Upgrades, Steady Pace

Alongside AccuRIG, Reallusion’s development roadmap is moving at a refreshingly consistent tempo. The next major update, Character Creator 5, is scheduled for August and promises new HD base meshes (with subdivision), improved shader tech, and more advanced facial animation systems. In the meantime, AccuRIG 2.0 receives interface upgrades, performance optimizations, and various bug fixes—further smoothing out the artist’s first steps into the Reallusion workflow.

Test, Then Trust

Every new workflow promises speed, but actual production always demands proof. Always test animation and rigging exports inside your target DCC environment before sending your assets into the wild—especially if you’re working in deadline-driven settings.

All-in-One, Free, and Still in Motion

Reallusion’s latest updates confirm: it’s never been easier to experiment with 3D character animation. The real surprise is just how cohesive the Reallusion ecosystem is becoming, update by update—at a pace the rest of the industry might want to keep an eye on.

AccuRIG Release Note – ActorCore

The post Animation for All: Reallusion AccuRIG 2.0 and Friends Keep Things Moving first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Epic Games has published a limited‑time freebie on its Fab marketplace: George Shachnev’s Flying Fantasy Town asset pack, a modular kit comprising 358 meshes for constructing stylised medieval or fantasy floating‑island towns. The pack covers both macro and micro design elements: modular buildings, floating islands, environment props such as barrels, carts, benches, crates, cooking pots, trees, and plants. All assets include LODs and high‑resolution textures up to 4096 × 4096px, to suit production requirements in Unreal Engine 4.27+ and 5.0+.

Licensing and Compatibility

The assets are distributed under the Fab Standard license, which permits integration into any engine or tool—including Unreal Engine or third‑party pipelines—for both personal and commercial use, subject to the Fab End‑User Licence Agreement.

Timing for Downloads

This kit is available free until 15 July 2025. After that, it reverts to commercial pricing on Fab. Artists working on games, realtime scenes, fly‑throughs or VFX environments might find this a practical plug‑and‑play resource, pending evaluation against existing art direction and texture pipeline standards.

Testing Required

Despite being production‑quality, assets like these should be reviewed within one’s own toolchain. Artists must validate mesh topology, texture fidelity, and LOD transitions within their CAVEs, VFX compositing scenes, or game engines before deployment.

All assets are directly downloadable from Epic’s Fab marketplace until July 15, 2025. Thorough toolchain testing is advised before using in active production pipelines.

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The post Unreal Engine Freebie: 350‑Piece Flying Fantasy Town Kit first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

ICE.ART kicks off a new sub-brand: ICE Nexus. Its first edition goes live June 25, 2025, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm CEST. The two-hour online event is free to attend and focuses on real-time 3D pixel streaming, co-hosted by Arcware.

Register for free here!

The Stream Scene: Agenda Highlights

After a short intro by ICE’s Matthias Buehler, Arcware’s Manolis Emmanouilidis and Derk Steemers explain how their solutions enable Unreal Engine pixel streaming for developers and 3D artists. Topics include sharing immersive 3D experiences and making real-time content accessible.

Presentations follow on a range of use cases. AVAR’s Madis Kirsman opens with a talk on virtual 3D showrooms. AccessPoint AI’s Rudi Witt and Steffen Schreiber dive into LLM-driven digital humans. 3DW’s Fabrice Bourrelly covers “The Realtime Revolution”, and BizzLogic’s Fatih Inan explores visualizing virtual and real worlds.

A live Q&A and panel discussion close the session, focused on how pixel streaming supports current production and what’s expected next.Topics range from technical workflows and production design to broader career-oriented themes: industry entry, budgeting, contracts, and job security. Tracks are thematic, not deeply technical—yet. The idea is to inspire professionals beyond their silos and to give juniors valuable career insight. The long-term goal: elevate art, artists, and collaboration at the intersection of disciplines.

Good to Know

This ICE Nexus event is part of the larger ICE.ART conference family. While the next full ICE.ART conference is set for October 1st/2nd, 2025, Nexus sessions are more focused one-offs. All industries tied to 3D environments are welcome, including entertainment, GIS, AEC/BIM, and training simulations.

Registration & Contact

To join, register directly at ice.art. Questions? Contact conference@ice.art or info@arcware.com.

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Testing reminder: All workflows and technologies presented at ICE Nexus should be tested in controlled environments before use in production.

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ICE Nexus agenda and event details: ICE.ART Homepage

The post ICE Nexus: Now Streaming, Pixel by Pixel first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.

3D generalist and video artist Calvin Serrano launches Worlds Next Door on June 8—a global challenge for digital artists using a shared Blender template. The concept: a first-person character opens a door, enters an unknown world, walks through, and exits through another. What’s behind the door is up to the participants.

The scene is provided as a fully animated Blender file, but the event is software-agnostic—any DCC may be used, as long as the final output meets spec. That includes a resolution of 1920×1440 pixels, framerate of 30fps, and delivery as ProRes, DNxHR, Cineform, or PNG sequence with alpha channel.

Participants can change elements like door design, arm and camera animation (specifically between frames 138–402), and the placement of the exit door. The only must: a seamless loop. Sound is optional, but AI-generated content is discouraged—judges want original work. Each artist (or team) may submit one entry. Submission deadline is July 6 at 22:00 Berlin time.

The top 50 short films will be edited into a cohesive collaborative film. Its plot: a father-inventor whose teleportation device flings his son into other dimensions. The father’s multiverse-hopping search forms the narrative thread. Judges will also contribute intro, outro, and interstitial scenes. The final film will premiere on YouTube and is slated for submission to international film festivals.

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Sponsored by the Blender Community

Backing for the challenge comes from Blender-centric studios, tools, and marketplaces: BlenderKit, Fox Renderfarm, Reallusion, GeoScatter, SuperHive Market, Physical Addons, Difffuse Studio, ShapeLab VR, BlenderBin, BlenderLighting, FlipFluids, Polygoniq, and Calver School.

There’s no entry fee and no obligation to use Blender—though the template, explainer video, and timeline live at worldsnextdoor.com

Join the Creative Odyssey

Digital artists worldwide are invited to participate in this opportunity to showcase their talents and contribute to a global storytelling endeavor, and have some fun going from door to door. For more information, submission guidelines, and to join the community, visit the official website: Worlds Next Door.

The post Step Into the Unknown: ‘Worlds Next Door’ Invites Digital Artists to Create and Collaborate first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

If you missed CEUM 2025.I—short for CityEngine User Meeting—you can now play catch-up. The full video set from the event has been uploaded to the 3D Environment hub: www.3d-env.tech.

Esri, the company behind CityEngine, supported the event, and several speakers contributed presentations—though again, specifics aren’t listed in this release. Still, if you use or explore procedural urban design, it’s worth a watch.

Dr. Michael Bieri [Esri Inc.]

Devin Lavigne [Houseal Lavigne]

Dmitry Kudinov [Esri Inc.]

CEUM 2025.II: Save the Date

Looking ahead: CEUM 2025.II is already scheduled. The second CityEngine User Meeting of the year takes place on 17 September 2025. If you’re planning to speak at the event, organiser Matt is open for submissions—reach out to get involved.

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The post CEUM 2025.1 Videos are online :) first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.

ICE 2025.II—also known as the 3D Environment Conference—is heading your way on 21 and 22 May 2025. Organised by the ICE.ART team, the event promises two days of 3D-centric knowledge exchange. The call to action is clear: registration is live, and it’s happening via the official website.

While the announcement doesn’t list topics or speakers yet, ICE conferences are typically known for bringing together professionals working in 3D environments, simulation, modelling, and real-time graphics. Still, no assumptions—what’s not explicitly listed stays out. The only certainty is: you can now register, and if you care about digital environments, you probably should. Check directly with the organisers via the official ICE site.

CEUM 2025.II: Save the Date

Looking ahead: CEUM 2025.II is already scheduled. The second CityEngine User Meeting of the year takes place on 17 September 2025. If you’re planning to speak at the event, organiser Matt is open for submissions—reach out to get involved.

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The post Mark Your Calendars: ICE & CEUM Return first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.

Since its debut in 2015, Character Creator (CC) has been widely embraced across industries and has grown into one of the most powerful 3D character creation tools on the market. As Character Creator marks its 10th anniversary, CC5 arrives with groundbreaking upgrades, including HD character workflow with subdivision support, enhanced shaders, and a next-generation facial animation system.

Auto Setup

In parallel, Auto Setup has evolved to broaden pipeline compatibility, seamlessly integrating industry-leading solutions with the Reallusion ecosystem, offering pre-configured skeleton and material setups for 3ds Max, Blender, and Unreal Engine. Auto Setup plugins are updated to support CC5 HD characters at no additional cost, with support for Maya and Marmoset introduced with the release of Character Creator 5.

Prelaunch?

Reallusion celebrates the CC5 release with a special CC5 Prelaunch Offer. Customers spending $399 or more before CC5 launches will receive CC5 (worth $299) for free. The first 1,000 participants get an extra $50 in Bonus Points for future purchases. With CC5 arriving this summer, now is the time to secure this limited offer and gear up for next-gen real-time 3D character creation. Moreover, all existing CC4 plugins and content will remain compatible with CC5, ensuring a smooth upgrade for users.

Learn more about the upcoming updates here.

The post The First Look at Character Creator 5: Prelaunch Offer Starts NOW first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Advertorial.

The CityEngine User Meeting 2025 (CEUM) is now open for registration. The annual event, focused on 3D environments, procedural modeling, and urban planning, takes place online on April 16, 2025, from 5–8 pm CEST (8–11 am PDT / 11 am–2 pm EDT). Participants can expect a mix of presentations, discussions, and insights from professionals in the field.

Call for Speakers

Got expertise in CityEngine and procedural 3D environments? The CEUM team is looking for speakers to share their knowledge with the community. Interested presenters can reach out via the official event page: www.3d-env.tech.

Join the 3D Environment Community

CEUM 2025 is an opportunity to connect with other CityEngine users, discuss workflows, and explore the latest in procedural modeling and urban design. Whether you’re a longtime user or just getting started, the event provides valuable insights into the tool’s applications in VFX, game development, and architecture.

The post CityEngine User Meeting 2025: Registration Open for CEUM first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ice.Art.