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JUL 20 · 2026 · Shipped

Rig and motion now share the Mixamo skeleton — animate your NIUA characters

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JUL 20 · 2026
Shipped#rig#motion#text2motion#game-engines#api#mcp

Rig and motion now share the Mixamo skeleton — animate your NIUA characters

Auto-rig a NIUA character and it comes back with real Mixamo bone names (mixamorig:*). Motion capture and text-to-motion already output game-ready clips on the same skeleton. So a NIUA-rigged character drops straight into your engine’s humanoid retargeter — and any Mixamo animation library, including NIUA’s own motion clips, retargets onto it. The whole mesh → rig → motion loop now speaks one language.

  • Rig endpoint target_skeleton "mixamo-humanoid" (default) renames the skeleton to Mixamo bones for engine/Mixamo drop-in; a non-humanoid mesh keeps raw names and reports mixamo_named:false — no wrong mapping, ever.
  • Motion + text-to-motion default to a game-ready GLB clip on the Mixamo skeleton (skeleton:"raw" for the research BVH). Retarget clips apply verbatim to a genuine Mixamo rig.
  • Import into Godot / Unity / Unreal and use their humanoid retargeter, or drive it with any Mixamo animation. Check mixamo_named on the completed rig job to branch on the outcome.
Open the playgroundRead the docs
JUL 14 · 2026
Changed#mesh#game-engines#playground#api#pricing

Mesh tier now picks cascade depth, not just export size

Game and Light tiers run a shorter generation cascade and cost less ($0.39 / $0.49). Hero keeps the full high-detail path ($0.79, $1.49 at 1536). Re-export LODs stay within the cascade you generated.

  • Tier dial controls cascade depth, export budget, and charge: Light $0.39 · Game $0.49 (default) · Hero $0.79 · Hero@1536 $1.49.
  • Game and Light early-exit for import-and-use props; Hero keeps the full cascade for max detail.
  • Re-export still builds LOD ladders from the saved recipe — but it cannot invent Hero density from a Game or Light generation.
  • Live prices on /pricing and GET /api/billing/prices; playground badges track the catalog.
Open the playgroundUser docs
JUL 11 · 2026
Shipped#mesh#game-engines#api#mcp

Re-export any mesh into game-engine-ready LODs

Every standard-track mesh keeps a generation recipe. Re-export it at a new polygon budget and texture size without re-running the full model — build a Hero / Game / Light LOD ladder from one source for Unity, Unreal, or Godot. Ceiling matches the cascade you generated with (see the 2026-07-14 tier update).

  • Three profiles: Hero (max faces / tex), Game (default, game-ready), Light (distant props). Or set an exact face budget and texture size on the API.
  • Re-derives from the saved recipe — no full cascade re-run — so LODs from the same source line up in-engine within that recipe’s detail ceiling.
  • Available in the playground Inspector (Re-export on any mesh), over the REST API, and as the reexport_mesh MCP tool.
Open the playgroundRead the docs
JUL 8 · 2026
Shipped#games#dogfooding#site

The NIUA Arcade opens — SWARM is playable in your browser

A new public /games hub for the game demos we build on NIUA. First on the shelf: SWARM, a poster-brutal survivor — every sound in it generated on NIUA, the game itself built by NIUA Studio, our agent driver for the Godot editor.

  • SWARM runs directly in the page — no download. One build, two experiences: keyboard on desktop, touch joystick + pads on phones, detected at runtime.
  • All 14 audio assets in the shipping build (theme + 13 SFX) were generated on NIUA — hear each one on the play page.
  • The hub is built to grow: every future demo lands on the same shelf with platform badges.
Play SWARMBrowse the arcade
JUN 20 · 2026
Fixed#frontend#3d#performance

Public 3D previews now load on demand

The landing page no longer downloads large GLB demos during first paint. Visitors see WebP posters first and open 3D only when they ask for it.

  • Moved the two 40-50 MB landing GLBs behind an explicit Open 3D preview action.
  • Removed the stale GLB preload from the HTML shell.
  • Forced public shared model pages to render only after a click.
JUN 20 · 2026
Changed#site#positioning

NIUA positioning now leads with asset generation

The public site now frames NIUA as asset generation for game developers, dogfooded to make our own game demos, instead of the older code-shipping slogan.

  • Updated the homepage hero, metadata, social card, footer, and auth surfaces.
  • Changed the public count from seven generators to eleven generation types.
  • Regenerated the OG image so shared links carry the new message.
JUN 19 · 2026
Fixed#share#public

Shared assets hide internal model info

Public share pages now focus on the asset, not backend implementation details.

  • Removed model metadata from the public share view.
  • Kept import and docs links visible for recipients.
JUN 19 · 2026
Changed#playground#cleanup

Image background removal retired from the frontend

The older background-removal surface was removed so the playground stays aligned with the active generation stack.

  • Removed the inspector entry from the playground.
  • Cleaned up retired frontend paths tied to the old bg-remove flow.