Auto-Rig Pro is an all-in-one solution to rig characters, retarget animations, and provide Fbx export, with presets for Unity and Unreal Engine. First developed as my own in-house rigging tool, i've released it a few years ago and many new features have been added since then.
Want to try first? Download Mike, free character rig here.
If the character is humanoid, the Smart feature can automatically place the bones to speed up the process, after adding the green markers. The result remains editable.
Non-humanoid characters can also be rigged without the Smart feature, manually (horse, dog...).
Based on a non-destructive workflow, the final rig remains easily editable anytime after its generation. Check the product documentation and the youtube channel for more informations.
The rig system itself is built for performances, allowing fast animation playback.
Important note about skinning: If possible, use water-tight geometry for best auto-skinning results. Knowing the bases of Blender's skinning tools, weight painting, to fine tweak the bones influences is recommended. Read the doc for more informations.
If you encounter any bugs please report it, be assured you'll receive support/bugfix quickly. Updates are free and will remain free! Also make sure to read the FAQ and the documentation to solve recurrent issues.
Modular - Fully Feature
Customize the rig definition in a few clicks: fingers, wings, toes, spine bones, multiple neck bones, tail, breasts, ears and much more. Duplicate or remove limbs to rig spiders, centaurs... or whatever!
Video tutorial, rig a centaur with the multi-limb feature: Centaur Rig
Wings for advanced feathers rig:
Spline IK limb to rig ropes, tentacles, IK spine...
Advanced Spline IK
3 bones IK for quadrupedal creatures:
Fingers IK-FK:
Intuitive tool to edit the bone shapes, with automatic mirror.
The Remap feature allows retargetting of any armature action to another one, with different bone names and bone orientations, supporting imported .bvh/.fbx armatures for example. Define the source armature, the target armature, and the animation will retarget according to the bones names matches and bones original orientation.
It support IK feet, hands for accurate motion tracking, and an interactive offset tool to remap to different characters proportions.
Additionally, to animate over a motion capture action on an additive layer, check the additive keyer addon (free)!
Game Engine Export
Auto-Rig Pro allows export to FBX format via a dedicated module, to proven engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine.
3 export types: Universal to export a simplified bones hierarchy for any creature, Humanoid for bipeds only, with options for easy retargetting and root motion, and Generic to export the deforming bones and the non-deforming ones if they are parent of the deforming bones.
Support of multiple twist bones for optimal volume preservation in game engines, where dual quaternions skinning is not possible (top: single twist bone, below: 4 twist bones)
Unit conversion to initialize the scale transforms values to 1.0 in Unity and Unreal Engine
Unreal Mannequin compliant: support Mannequin bones hierarchy, bone axes conversion, bones naming
Automatic A-Pose
Support full facial rig, and advanced bones. "Twist" mode for secondary controllers, wrapped on bendy-bones for smooth curves effects, leading to 1:1 export compatibility in Fbx format
Actions are baked to the simplified rig
Animated shape keys (blend shapes) support
Selective/multiple action export
Root motion support
Bring your poses to the next level!
The secondary controllers offer a unique control over the pose. Located all along the limbs, they're dedicated to fine pose sculpting, cartoon effects, bending, stretching, etc. Three deformations mode in option: Twist (exportable to Fbx and bendy-bones based for best compatibility), Additive (exportable to FBX), Bendy-Bones (Blender only).
Just use them instead of corrective shape keys, or as a complement. Below a typical leg bent before and after tweaking the secondary controllers.
Corrective shape keys can be created easily with a dedicated tool supporting IK-FK bone chains:
Tell Me More!
Extensive list of what's in the box:
Automatic bone placement solver based on mesh recognition for bipeds character
Edit Reference Bones feature to modify the rig anytime you want. No need to redo everything if a bone is not where you want it to be.
Apply Pose as Rest Pose feature to quickly change the rest pose of the character, aligning reference bones on it and applying armature modifiers in a single click
Modular: only use what you need. Fingers, toes, ears, breast, adjustable amount of spine, twist bones, tail, and neck bones. Duplicate or remove limbs to rig creatures with multiple arms and legs.
Fingers auto-rotation option: bend when scaling the first phalange, pre-defined fist pose
Easy bone shape edition
Bone picker: Can be turned on/off, import/export presets. Customizable.
Colors customization
Cartoon compliant: stretchy spine, legs, arms...
A clear, easy to use and colorful bone picker
IK-FK snap with autokey working, and snaps properly when unlocking all the leg/forearm rotation axis
IK-FK controllers auto hide
Hybrid IK pole / IK arrow vector
Knees and elbows pinning
Head rotation locked or free
Bend all fingers in one click (fingers grasp), fist pre-defined pose, auto rotation of fingers phalanges from scale
IK/FK eyes
Auto-eyelid rotation
Multiple Child-Of constraints support for the IK hands and feet to change their parent space any time (e.g. if the character is driving a car, hands on the wheel, then grab the car door)
Complete set of secondary controllers for fine pose sculpt
Advanced facial setup with automated placement
Shape keys drivers creation tool
Game engines support: Unity - Unreal Engine FBX Generic and Humanoid rig type
Bone remapper to retarget any armature action to another one, with different bone names and bone orientations. Bvh/Fbx files compliant - Mixamo animations, with IK support
By buying this addon you support my work and the Blender foundation, its developers financially. A part of each sale is donated to them. It's worth a big thank you from the open source community, helping Blender remaining free and accessible for everyone! And obviously you ensure the funds for this addon next new features, bugfix. I'm making my best to constantly improve the beast, based on users requests and my own ideas. Have quick look at the release log below. You receive a notification when the addon is updated, and download it for free.
Users Cases:
Auto-Rig Pro is actively used in the film and video-game industry, a few examples:
Rig: Set Auto-Stretch to 0.0 by default to new armatures
Rig: IK-FK shapes are now scaled with linear interpolation drivers, to ease selection (before, bones were hidden). To apply to old armatures, click "Update Armature" in the Misc tab of Auto-Rig Pro
Rig: IK pole position improved when snapping, in-line with the knee
Smart: New options to set spine bones count and spine root orientation upward automatically
Smart: Improved fingers detection with forearm rotated forward
Smart: Improved automatic knee position for IK pole constraints
Export: New "Only Selected Bones" option to export only selected bones (Thanks to Jesper for contributing!)
Export: New "Soft Linking" option to maintain animated bones scale to 1, allowing cheap stretch effect in game engines without actually scaling bones which lead to issues (Thanks to Jesper for contributing!)
Fixed:
Remap: Incorrect fingers rotations with IK hands
Smart: Fixed incompatibility with fingers detection in Blender 2.92
Smart: Fingers detection issues when mesh rotation mode was set to "Axis Angle"
Export: error with unexpected custom properties
Export: Bone transforms error when no animations were exported with UE options under certain circumstances
Export: Fix offset in animation IK bones transforms
Export: Clean temporary actions if necessary by clicking "Check Rig"
Rig: Deleting the picker was broken
--[3.59.35]--
New/improved:
Rig: New Fingers IKs option for arm limbs .Backward-compatible with older rigs.Fingers IK-FK switch and snap. IK target on finger tip/ or third phalange bone root. Can be changed on the fly. Custom shape and color options. Parent options. Automatic Free-Lock IK targets parent
UI: Enhanced the arm options interface layout
Export: New animation export options: export only the active action + frame range settings. Thanks to Jesper for funding these features!
Export: New buttons to quickly set/unset the selected bones as custom bones for export
Export: IK bones for Unreal now support animation
Export: Allow export of humanoid without neck/head
Export: Only Active did not work if the active action was disabled from export
Remap: New option to use the current pose or real rest pose when redefining the armature rest pose
Remap: New "Rokoko" preset compliant with new Rokoko bone names convention
Skinning: Voxelize could not work in certain cases. Improved with more accurate internal tests
Skinning: Voxelize could lead to vertices with no weight in certain cases
Rig: Ensures spine bend bones are hidden when secondary controllers are set to None
Fixed:
Rig: Error with IK Fingers
Skinning: Scale Fix did not work with some very low scale models. As a fix, doubled the scale factor.
Skinning: Remove warnings in the console
Export: Bottom bones not exporting
Export: Ear bones parent could be wrong when exporting as humanoid
Export: Animation Layer addon and action blend type different than "Replace" fix
Export: Splines IK and UE options error
Export: Issue with Splines IK as proxy
Remap: Freeze armature incorrect rotation
Remap: Error when using an ARP as target armature with scale value different from 1
Remap: Ensures the target armature is set to pose position when cancelling Redefine Rest Pose
