AI Animation for Games: Mocap, Rigging & Motion

Your character model is done, and now it needs to walk, run, jump and swing a sword. AI tools can do much of that work: some turn a phone video into 3D motion capture, some rig a model automatically, and some write motion from a text prompt. This guide covers eight of them for beginners and indie game makers: what each does, what it costs and whether you can sell what you make. Everything comes from each vendor's own pages and docs, checked on October 19 and 20, 2026.

The three kinds of AI animation tools

• Mocap from video (markerless motion capture). You film a person doing the move, upload the clip, and the AI estimates a 3D skeleton for every frame. DeepMotion, Rokoko Vision, Plask and Viggle PINOC work this way. DeepMotion, Rokoko Vision and Plask capture only human motion.
• Auto-rigging plus motion. The tool adds a skeleton and skin weights to your model, and you pick moves like idle, walk or attack (Meshy) or describe one (Bake3D).
• Generated or assisted motion. Kimodo generates motion from text. In Cascadeur you set key poses and AI fills in the rest.

Many pipelines combine two: rig with one tool, get motion from another, then clean it up.

What to look for

• Commercial rights on the plan you'll actually use. This is the big one. Several free plans are personal or non-commercial only. If you might sell your game on Steam or itch.io, read the license first. See can you sell a game made with AI.
• Export formats your engine reads. FBX is the safe default for Unity and Unreal. GLB (glTF) imports directly into Godot and Blender. BVH is a motion-only format that usually needs retargeting in a 3D app first.
• Custom characters. Can you apply motion to your own rigged character, or only a default mannequin?
• Cleanup tools. Raw AI mocap has jitter and foot sliding, so an editor for fixing it matters.
• Free allowance. Video mocap is billed by seconds of footage. 30 free seconds a month is enough to test, not to animate a game.

Comparison table

DeepMotion Animate 3D

What it is and how it works

DeepMotion Animate 3D is browser-based AI motion capture. You upload a video from any device, pick a character (your own FBX, GLB or VRM, one from the built-in Ready Player Me or Avaturn creators, or a default), and it retargets the motion onto it. It can track up to 8 people in one video.

Standout features

• Face and hand tracking, physics simulation, foot locking and motion smoothing.
• The Rotoscope Pose Editor for fixing poses frame by frame over the input video.

Limits

Its capture guide says the AI is built around human motion and isn't suitable for cartoon or abstract figures in the video. The maximum video length is 300 seconds, and the file size limit is 50 MB on Freemium (100 MB on Innovator, 200 MB on Professional). Hand tracking costs an extra 0.5 animation credits per second.

Price and rights

Freemium is free with no card, and its FAQ says it covers up to 60 seconds of animation a month for personal, non-commercial use. Paid plans: Starter $15/mo ($9/mo annual), Innovator $48/mo ($17/mo annual), Professional $117/mo ($39/mo annual) and Studio $300/mo ($83/mo annual). The FAQ says licensed animation requires a premium plan.

Best for: turning a phone video into character animation, especially if you want face or hand tracking.

Rokoko Vision

What it is and how it works

Rokoko Vision turns a single video into 3D animation with no suit or markers. Version 3.0 is part of Rokoko Create, a web platform that also has text-to-motion. You upload a video to Rokoko Create, edit the result in Rokoko Studio, then export FBX or BVH on a skeleton such as HIK or Mixamo.

Standout features

• Rokoko Studio for viewing, editing, looping and retargeting the capture. Studio has native Unity and Unreal plugins.
• Single or dual camera recording; Rokoko says dual camera gives the best results.

Limits

Rokoko says Vision captures one performer at a time, isn't real time, and launched 3.0 without finger tracking.

Price and rights

The Starter plan is free forever, with 30 seconds of Vision processing a month, unlimited text-to-motion clips and 5 text-to-motion Studio imports a month. Basic costs $12/mo ($10/mo annual) and adds custom character import and retargeting, BVH export and 600 seconds of processing. Rokoko's FAQ says all generated data from video-to-motion and text-to-motion can be used commercially, and it doesn't limit that to paid plans.

Best for: single-camera mocap that you then clean up and retarget in a dedicated editor.

Plask

What it is and how it works

Plask turns video footage into 3D character animation in the browser. You upload a video and apply the extracted motion to your character. It imports GLB, FBX (version 7100 or later), VRM 0.0 and PMX (MikuMikuDance) models.

Standout features

• Exports FBX, BVH or GLB for Blender, Unreal Engine, Maya and other tools.
• Plask Live streams motion into Blender (saved as an action) and into Unreal through Live Link.

Limits

Plask Live's camera setup currently requires macOS 14 or later, an internet connection and API credits.

Price and rights

Freemium is free: 15 seconds of motion capture a day, 1 GB of storage and FBX, GLB and BVH export. Standard is $18/mo and Pro $50/mo, both billed annually. Plask's FAQ says the intellectual property in animations created by subscribers belongs to the users. Its terms are stricter for free users: free use is personal and non-commercial, and commercial use needs a paid commercial subscription.

Best for: free-to-start video mocap if you work in Blender or Unreal.

Viggle PINOC

What it is and how it works

PINOC is the 3D tool from Viggle, the company behind the Viggle meme app. It runs on JST-2, Viggle's 3D model for characters, motion and scenes, announced in October 2026. You upload a clip (phone footage, a webcam recording or a screen recording with one clear subject) or type the move you want, and PINOC turns it into full-body 3D motion. Text prompts return several takes to pick from. You preview the motion on a 3D character, then download it.

Standout features

• Exports motion as FBX or GLB on a 65-bone, Mixamo-named skeleton, for Blender, Unity, Unreal Engine, Maya, Cinema 4D and Houdini.
• Free auto-rigging: upload a mesh, place a few guide markers, and PINOC builds the skeleton and paints the weights. If your model is already rigged, it maps the existing bones. Rigging, retargeting and the motion library don't use credits.
• Generates 3D characters from a photo or text, and 3D scenes from a prompt.
• An API and an MCP server, so AI agents can use the motion library and generate motion and characters.

Limits

PINOC's characters and scenes are Gaussian splats, not meshes, so they won't drop into a normal mesh pipeline. Viggle says no standard format carries an animated splat character, and lists its Unity plugin for them as coming soon. For your own game characters, use the FBX or GLB motion on your own rigged model. Viggle says hidden body parts in a video are inferred, not measured. Viggle's meme and video app is a separate product that outputs MP4 video only and is billed separately (Pro $9.99/mo).

Price and rights

The free plan gives 60 credits once, about 1 minute of motion or 12 image-to-3D characters, with 1 motion export and 1 character export. It's for personal, evaluation and prototyping use only. Starter is $10.39/mo billed yearly (300 credits a month) and Pro is $31.99/mo billed yearly (1,200 credits a month). Both include unlimited exports and commercial use. Motion from video or text costs 1 credit per second. Viggle's terms say paid users own their PINOC outputs.

Best for: getting motion from a phone video or a text prompt onto your own rigged character, with free auto-rigging.

Cascadeur

What it is and how it works

Cascadeur, by Nekki, is desktop 3D animation software with AI assistance. You set key poses and the AI helps: AutoPosing finds a natural pose from a few control points, Inbetweening fills motion between keyframes, and AutoPhysics shows a physically accurate version so you can adjust weight and inertia. It also lists AI motion generation (runs, jumps, combat, idles) and ragdoll simulation.

Standout features

• Automatic rigging for humanoids and quadrupeds, and retargeting between different skeletons.
• Mocap cleanup tools to fix foot sliding, knee pops and geometry penetration, which makes it a good second step after DeepMotion, Rokoko or Plask.
• Works with FBX, DAE, GLB/glTF and USD files. Live Link streams animation to Unreal in real time.

Limits

It's a full animation app, with more to learn than a website. Live Link is a paid feature (Indie, Pro and Teams), Windows only, and the plugin works with Unreal 5.5 to 5.8 and Cascadeur 2026.1 or later. For the default Unreal skeleton, Cascadeur recommends animating its UE5 Manny or UE5 Quinn files and exporting binary FBX.

Price and rights

The free license has the full toolset but exports only .casc files and is non-commercial. Indie is $19/mo ($8/mo yearly) and allows commercial use if your revenue or funding is under $100,000 a year. Pro and Teams are $49/mo ($33/mo yearly) with full commercial use.

Best for: believable, hand-directed character animation, and polishing mocap from other tools.

Meshy

What it is and how it works

Meshy is mainly a text- and image-to-3D generator, but its Animate module auto-rigs humanoid and quadruped characters and applies preset motions. You pick a model (T-pose or A-pose recommended), let auto-rig add a skeleton, choose presets, and export FBX or GLB. Meshy's docs put the library at 500+ presets, and its pricing page advertises 600+ motions on paid plans.

Standout features

• The API can merge up to 10 preset actions into one file, one clip per action, which its docs say is useful for a game engine state machine.

Limits

Meshy's docs say auto-rigging isn't suitable for untextured meshes, non-humanoid assets (in the API) or characters with unclear limbs, and that props, buildings and vehicles can't be rigged. They recommend running Remesh before rigging. Its Roblox Bridge handles static models only.

Price and rights

The free plan gives 100 credits a month, and free output is CC BY 4.0, so you can use it commercially if you credit Meshy. Paid plans are Pro $20/mo, Premium $40/mo and Ultra $100/mo, plus Studio for teams at $70/mo. Paid output is private and yours. See Meshy vs Tripo.

Best for: quickly getting a generated humanoid or four-legged character walking and attacking in your engine.

Bake3D

What it is and how it works

Bake3D turns one image, or up to four views of the same subject, into a textured 3D model, builds a rig that fits the shape, and animates it from a text description or a compatible motion. It lists animals, winged creatures, serpents, many-limbed creatures, vehicles and objects among the shapes it handles.

Standout features

• Joint roles, so motion can address legs, wings and tails.
• Exports GLB (mesh, textures, skeleton and skin weights, plus baked keyframes), binary FBX 7.4 or USDZ.
• A Blender add-on, a Unity tool (with glTFast), an Unreal workflow through the Interchange glTF pipeline, an API and an MCP server. Godot imports its glTF directly.

Limits

Bake3D says input quality and topology affect every result, and asks you to inspect the generated rig before production use. There's no free generation for new accounts, only the demo.

Price and rights

Pay-once packs never expire and run from $5 (80 credits) to $60 (1,250). Plans are Pro $29/mo (750 credits) and Studio $79/mo (2,100). A standard-quality rigged character costs 65 credits (mesh 40 plus rig 25), a described motion costs 10, and presets and exports are free. Anything made with purchased credits carries a commercial, royalty-free license that stays valid after you stop paying.

Best for: creatures and other characters that standard humanoid rigs can't handle, starting from a single drawing.

NVIDIA Kimodo

What it is and how it works

Kimodo is NVIDIA's open-source motion model, trained on 700 hours of commercially friendly optical mocap data according to its README. You describe a motion in text, and you can add constraints: full-body key poses, hand and foot targets, 2D paths and waypoints. It has a command line tool and a local browser demo with a timeline editor.

Standout features

• Constraints let a character follow a path or hit a pose at a given frame.
• BVH export for SOMA skeletons, plus NPZ, AMASS NPZ and MuJoCo CSV formats.

Limits

This is a research tool for people comfortable with Python. You need a Hugging Face token with access to Meta's gated Llama 3 8B Instruct model, which Kimodo uses as its text encoder. The README says it needs about 17 GB of GPU memory to run fully on the GPU, or under 3 GB with the text encoder on the CPU, and was developed on Linux. Motions max out at 10 seconds per prompt, and the docs say prompts outside its training data, such as baseball, will likely give bad results.

Price and rights

Free. The code is Apache-2.0, and the SOMA and G1 models use the NVIDIA Open Model License, which allows commercial use. The SMPL-X model is under NVIDIA's R&D license and isn't for commercial use, and the Llama 3 text encoder has Meta's own license.

Best for: free, controllable motion generation if you have an NVIDIA GPU and don't mind a terminal.

Step-by-step: from video to an animated character in your engine

This pipeline combines the vendors' own docs. Swap tools in or out as you like.

1. Get a rigged character. Use your own model, or generate one and rig it in Meshy (humanoid or quadruped) or Bake3D (any shape). Meshy recommends a T-pose or A-pose and running Remesh first.
2. Film the move. DeepMotion's and Rokoko's guides agree: a stationary camera on a tripod, 2 to 6 meters (6 to 20 feet) away, the whole body in frame the entire time, even lighting and contrast with the background. Wear fitted clothes that show elbows, knees and hips, and avoid all-black outfits. DeepMotion recommends at least 1080p at 30 fps, and a 3/4 angle for moves on the ground.
3. Trim before you process. Rokoko's docs suggest trimming to the part you need, which saves processing time and allowance.
4. Process and pick your character. Upload your own character to DeepMotion, or open the capture in Rokoko Studio (custom characters need Basic).
5. Clean up. Fix bad frames with DeepMotion's Rotoscope Pose Editor, Rokoko Studio's filters, or bring the FBX into Cascadeur to fix foot sliding and add weight with AutoPhysics.
6. Export. FBX for Unity and Unreal, GLB for Godot and Blender. Cascadeur bakes every frame into a keyframe by default so the animation looks the same in any engine.
7. Import and retarget in your engine.
   • Unity: select the model, open the Rig tab, set Animation Type to Humanoid, click Apply, then configure the Avatar (the model must be in a T-pose). Use Generic for non-humanoid rigs.
   • Unreal: import binary FBX, then use an IK Retargeter, or Retarget Animation Assets, to move clips onto your skeleton. If you animate in Cascadeur for the default Epic skeleton, use its UE5 Manny or Quinn files.
   • Godot 4: in the advanced import settings, select the Skeleton3D, set a BoneMap with the SkeletonProfileHumanoid preset (it auto-maps common bone names), and enable the Rest Fixer options. Godot's reference pose is a T-pose facing +Z; turn on Fix Silhouette for A-pose models. Coding help: Godot with AI.
8. Wire it up in a state machine: Unity's Animator Controller, Unreal's Animation Blueprint or Godot's AnimationTree.

Example prompts and settings

Kimodo prompts. The docs recommend starting with "A person…", keeping to one or two behaviors per prompt, and using a medium level of detail. Its training data covers locomotion, gestures, everyday actions, video game combat, dancing and styles like tired, stealthy or injured. These examples follow that advice (they're our examples, not lines from the docs):

• "A person walks forward cautiously, looking left and right."
• "An injured person limps forward, holding their left arm."
• "A person swings a sword overhead with both hands, then steps back."

For a longer sequence, the docs say to split it into prompts that each make sense on their own.

Bake3D motion descriptions. Describe one action for the body you have, for example "the dragon folds its wings and lands" or "the fox wags its tail and looks around". These are our examples; Bake3D's site mentions a glance, a tail wag or a change of pace.

Meshy presets. In the API, pass several action IDs to get one file with one clip per action. The docs' example uses idle, walk and "Double Combo Attack" (IDs 10, 25 and 92).

Common mistakes and tips

• A handheld or moving camera. The vendors ask for a stationary camera; zooms and cuts hurt tracking.
• Baggy or black clothes. Fitted, patterned clothes give the AI clearer joints.
• Making a whole game on a non-commercial plan. Check the license before you build your animation set, not after.
• Expecting video mocap to animate a creature. It captures human motion. For a four-legged or winged character, use Meshy's quadruped rig, Bake3D or Cascadeur's quadruped tools.
• Skipping the T-pose. Unity's Avatar setup, Godot's retargeting and Meshy's rigging expect a T-pose (or A-pose with the right settings).
• Long takes. Short, single-action clips cost less and are easier to clean and loop.
• Not checking the rig. Bake3D and Meshy both say to inspect the skeleton and weights before production use.

Which should you pick?

By budget

• $0: DeepMotion Freemium, Rokoko Starter and Plask Freemium for mocap tests; Meshy's free plan with credit to Meshy if you'll sell; Kimodo if you have the GPU. For a whole free toolkit, see the best free AI game-making tools.
• Under $15 a month: Cascadeur Indie at $8/mo billed yearly, Rokoko Basic at $10/mo annual, Viggle PINOC Starter at $10.39/mo billed yearly, or a one-off $5 to $25 Bake3D pack.

By skill

• Total beginner: Meshy or DeepMotion.
• Some 3D experience: Rokoko Vision with Rokoko Studio, or Cascadeur for directed, physics-aware animation.
• Comfortable with code: Kimodo, or the Meshy, Bake3D, Plask and Viggle APIs.

By engine

• Unity: Rokoko Studio and Meshy have Unity plugins, Bake3D has a Unity tool, and every FBX here works with Unity's Humanoid rig.
• Unreal: Cascadeur's Live Link, Plask Live and Rokoko's Unreal plugin, plus Bake3D's Interchange workflow.
• Godot: pick tools that export GLB (Meshy, Bake3D, Plask, DeepMotion, Viggle PINOC), and retarget with Godot's BoneMap.

Need the character first? See the best AI 3D model generators; Tripo and Sloyd can also rig. Browse every option on our AI animation and mocap tools page, or take the tool matcher.