Armature makes rigging free, Cascadeur adds layers and MCP, BlendKit comes to Godot

A strong week for anyone trying to get a character moving. A new standalone app rigs and skins characters with AI for free, Cascadeur shipped the animation layers its users have been asking for, and Godot users got a free asset library inside the editor. Tencent also published two research projects that hint at where AI 3D generation goes next.

Armature rigs and skins characters for free

Armature from FabricatorStudio is a standalone Windows app that places a skeleton on your character and binds the skin weights (how the mesh bends with each bone) using machine learning. You then refine the result and export to Unreal Engine, where it can build a Control Rig (Unreal's in-engine animation rig) for you, or to Maya, with Blender and Houdini supported through USD, a common 3D scene format. It takes FBX, OBJ, glTF and USD files and has templates for bipeds, quadrupeds and props.

Rigging is one of the most painful steps of a first game, so a free tool aimed at game characters stands out. Two caveats. The AI skinning needs an NVIDIA GPU, with a slower fallback method on other hardware. And the pricing has been described two ways: the official page says Armature is free for everyone, while CG Channel's launch coverage described it as free for indies under $100K revenue with a $149 license above that. Check the terms before you rely on it commercially.

Cascadeur 2026.2 adds animation layers and an MCP server

Nekki's Cascadeur 2026.2 adds additive animation layers, so you can adjust a finished animation without destroying the keys underneath, plus easing controls for the spacing between keys, BVH import (a common motion capture file format), and retrained AI motion generation and inbetweening (filling in the frames between your key poses). It also adds a basic MCP server reachable from the Scripts menu. MCP is the standard, rewritten last week, that lets AI agents use outside tools, so an agent such as Claude can now drive Cascadeur. That puts it alongside the engines going agent friendly.

Layers are still labelled alpha. The update is available now, including in the free edition, but the free edition still cannot export to standard formats, so shipping work needs Indie at $96 a year for teams under $100K revenue.

BlendKit's asset library comes to Godot

BlendKit, the asset library long tied to Blender, released free, open-source plugins for Godot, Maya and Rhino. Godot users can browse and drop in models, materials and HDRIs (360 degree images used to light a scene) from a library CG Channel puts at more than 60,000 free assets, and the plugin works without Blender installed. It needs Godot 4.0 or later.

BlendKit calls the plugin alpha and experimental. It is officially supported on Windows and Linux, with macOS untested. Licensing varies per asset, so check each one before it goes into a game you sell.

Also worth your time

• Autodesk Flow Studio, from the Wonder Dynamics team, added a browser 3D Editor and a node-based Canvas. The 3D Editor builds scenes with characters, animation, cameras and generated Worlds, which is handy for blocking out a trailer without a 3D app. It is a cinematic previs tool, not a game editor, and generation runs on credits.
• Tencent's Hunyuan3D team published Hunyuan3D-Buffalo, a research model that generates, understands and edits 3D in one system. Editing existing assets by instruction is the gap today's generators leave open. Paper and project page only, no weights or app.
• The same team also released WorldClaw, research on agents that compose whole 3D open worlds rather than single objects. No code, weights or tool to try yet.
• CG Channel reports that the makers of World Creator have announced Material Creator, a procedural material tool pitched as a rival to Substance 3D Designer. It is an announcement only, with no release date yet.

What are you rigging this week? Reply and let us know.