How do you cleanup animation in Cascadeur?

This is a guide to how to cleanup the following animation types, supported by Cascadeur as of March 2025 (version 2024.3.3):

• UE5 Manny or Quinn
• UE4 Mannequin
• UEFN Mannequin
• Move AI
• XSens MVN_PUPPET
• Rokoko

NOTE: If you don’t already have Cascadeur, the best option IMHO is to get the INDIE version, for $96 (as of March 2025). After you pay that, after a year it becomes “perpetual”. That is, within a year you will get updates, and then after that you can keep the software but won’t get updates. Make sure you read all about the features MISSING from the Indie version before you buy it.

STEP 1. REDUCE TO 4000 FRAMES

The FBX you end up with in Cascadeur MUST BE LESS THAN 4000 frames. Otherwise it won’t work. So either:

• Make/record your animation to be less than 4000 frames, or
• split up your animation into separate FBX files that are each less than 4000 frames

How to reduce to 4000 frames in Maya

If you’re using Maya, here’s a quick rundown of how to reduce an animation to 4000 frames.

• Import the FBX of your animation
• Change the timeline FPS to be the correct one
  
• In the Outliner, click “root“.
  
• Go to the top SELECT menu and click HIERARCHY
  
  
• In the Timeline, you need to decide which section you want to keep, and delete all other keyframes. To do that:
  • Select all the frames BEFORE the section you want to keep. To do that, hold down shift and left click drag on the section you don’t want.
    
  • Right click on the selection, and choose “Delete“.
    
  • Maya will freeze, but that’s normal. It usually takes between five and twenty seconds to begin responding again.
  • Now Select all the frames AFTER the section you want to keep. To do that, hold down shift and left click drag on the section you don’t want.
    
  • Right click on the selection, and choose “Delete“.
    
  • Maya will freeze, but that’s normal. Again, it usually takes between five and twenty seconds to begin responding again.
• Now you have only the keyframes that you want in the Timeline, but we need to move them so they start on frame 0. To do that:
  • First, have a look at the first frame that you want to keep, and make a note of the frame number.
    
  • Open up the Graph Editor if you don’t already have it open (WINDOWS > ANIMATION EDITORS > GRAPH EDITOR)
  • You should have the entire “Root” hierarchy selected. If not, select “root” in the Outliner, and go SELECT > HIERARCHY.
  • Press “A” on the keyboard to frame everything up.
  • Marquee-select all the key frames in the Graph Editor. Maya will freeze for quite a while.
  • Once Maya begins responding again, the keyframes will all have tangents on them, so the Graph Editor will look like its full of gray bristles.
  • At the top of the Graph Editor, on the left side it will have the word Stats. Just to the right of that, there is a text field. Click in there, and type in negative, equals, and then the frame number that you noted before.
    
  • Maya will freeze once again. Wait for it to respond again, and you will see that your keyframes now start at frame 0.
    
  • You can now close Graph Editor if you like.
• Now in the Timeline, you need to double check that you don’t have any keyframes after the section you want. So make sure that the entire Root hierarchy is once again selected, then in the timeline, just scrub through and make sure.
• Now its time to export the animation. So to do that:
  • Go to the FILE menu, EXPORT ALL.
    
  • Change to export all down the bottom, and name your file.
    
  • On the right, change the preset to AUTODESK MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT.
    
    
  • Click to export.

DO NOT ‘fix’ the scene in Maya to be a different axis up. You might be tempted to change the ‘up’ in Maya, so that you don’t have to rotate the body in Cascadeur. Don’t do that! For some reason, it always screws up the results – at least for me in July 2024.

STEP 3. IMPORT TO CASCADEUR

• Open Cascadeur
  
• In the splash “HOME” page, click “MODELS“.
  
• Double click the character that will work with your animation’s skeleton type.
  • UE5 Manny or Quinn
  • UE4 Mannequin
  • UEFN Mannequin
  • Move AI
  • XSens MVN_PUPPET
  • Rokoko
• For this tutorial, I’ll assume you’ve chosen the UNREAL 5 mannequin, but the steps are the same for each type.
• In the outliner, twirl down “SK_Mannequin“
• Right click “SK_Mannequin” and choose “select branch“.
  
• The character should now be highlighted yellow like this:
  
• Go FILE > IMPORT > FBX/DAE
• In the popup window:
  • Change the PRESETS dropdown to “ANIMATION TO SELECTED OBJECTS“.
  • Make sure the IMPORT MODE is set to UPDATE and its set to “Import to selected joints“
  • Under INCLUDE just select ANIMATIONS
    
  • click IMPORT
• It might taken ten minutes or more to process. It will seem to “freeze”, but you have to just wait for it to finish.

Step 4. Fix character Alignment

• Press X to play the timeline if you want to, or scrub through the frames to see the animation.
• You will see that the character is “incorrectly aligned“. You need to prepare to rotate it using the following instructions:
  • Go back to FRAME 0 in the Timeline.
  • On the right-side of the Timeline, click the cog icon.
    
  • Change the “Framerate” to match what you originally set in Rokoko Studio. Then click to close the Timeline settings window.
    
  • In the Timeline, click the “+UE4_SK_Mannequin” track title, to select all keyframes. A subtle black border will surround the blue keyframes on the timeline.
    
  • In the dock where the Outliner is, change the tab to “Scene Settings“
  • Scroll down to the heading “Manipulators” and twirl it down
  • Click the circle to the left of “Fix rotation step” to enable it. (It will turn blue.)
  • Make sure it is set to 90. (This will snap any rotation changes to 90 degrees.)
    
  • In the Timeline, make sure you are on frame 0.
  • Just above the timeline, click these two icons to enable them:
    
  • The viewport will turn RED
• Now, to rotate it, there are two options:

You have now fixed the scene!

To exit the ‘edit interval mode‘, click these two icons again to disable them:

Step 5. Save your project

• Press X to play the timeline if you want to, or scrub through the frames to see the animation.
• Go to FILE > SAVE, and save your mocap scene before you start doing any cleanup.

Step 6. Do basic mocap cleanup

It’s up to you how you want to work in Cascadeur. But here’s a quick overview of some basic steps to improve the motion capture.

• DOUBLE CLICK the track title in the Timeline.
  
• In the viewport, you will see purple dots showing the motion of your character.
• 
• In the top ribbon, on the right-hand side, click the icon of the two feet with a padlock – this is FULCRUM MOTION CLEANING.
  
• A very subtle message will appear in the bottom right of the viewport, letting you know that fulcrum cleaning is complete.
  
• Next, in the middle of the top ribbon above the viewport, click the icon of a running man. This is “Auto Physics”.
  
• You will see messages in the bottom right-hand side of the viewport, as it processes the auto physics.
  
• When it’s done, you’ll see a green version of your character in the scene.
  
• To make it easier to see what is happening, click the “Physics settings” tab, then click the radio button to turn off “Ghost offset“.
  
• Now if you rewind to frame 0 in the Timeline and press X, you’ll see that the two mannequins are overlapping. The green is showing you the autophysics that Cascadeur wants to apply.
  
• Now, in the top ribbon, to the right of the Auto Physics icons you’ll see other ones have appeared. Click the running man with a U in the corner, which is “Snap To Auto Physics”.
  
• You’ll once again see various notifications in the bottom right corner of your viewport, as it processes the changes.
• Once it’s done, go up to the top ribbon, and click the original Running Man icon (Auto Physics) to turn it off.
  
• Now go back to frame 0 in the timeline, and press X to play through your animation. You will see subtle differences.
• Go to the FILE menu, SAVE, to save your project in case the next step crashes the program.
• In the top ribbon, on the very right-hand side, click the icon for “Animation Unbaking“.
  
• Cascadeur will seem to freeze. Don’t worry, that’s normal. It’s processing behind the scenes, but unfortunately at the moment there’s no progress bar to tell you what it’s doing. You just need to wait until the timeline changes from solid blue keyframes to a series of pink, dark blue and cyan sections.
  

Step 7. Further cleanup

Now you have done basic mocap cleanup, but you will need to adjust the animation further.