Auto-Rig Pro is an all-in-one solution to rig characters, retarget animations, and provide Fbx export 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
Customize the rig definition in a few clicks: fingers, toes amount, spine and neck bones amount, tail, breasts, ears, duplicate or remove limbs to rig spiders, centaurs, or whatever!
Video tutorial, rig a centaur with the multi-limb feature: Centaur Rig
The picker panel dynamically updates: select any bone from the separate panel easily.
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.
Updates:
Make sure to uninstall the current addon before installing the new one and restart blender
--[3.55.12]--
New/improved:
Remap: New option "In Place" to keep the source armature animation at the same place
Smart: facial markers now supports asymmetrical models, with Mirror disabled
Export: performance improvements when exporting shape keys
Rig: New automatic twist for multiple neck bones
Rig: New bendy bones segment value for the neck
Rig: A single custom hotkey can now be assigned to the Snap IK-FK function for quick snapping. The internal code was refactored to make it a single function call for legs and arms.
Rig: For compatibility with the Library Overrides (replacement for the link-proxy system), custom properties of the armature can now be overridden (IK-FK switch, stretch length...). Click the "Update Armature" button in the Misc tab of Auto-Rig Pro to update older armatures properties.
Internal:
Ensure invalid or duplicated drivers are deleted when Match to Rig for optimal performances and avoid warning message in console
Refactored the update armature function
Cleanup, removed old functions
Removed unused bones properties "arp_layer"
Made export functions compatible with the new neck twists bones
Fixed:
Smart: Error when detecting knees under certain circumstances
Rig: Backward-compatibility issue with the root bone options
Remap: Error with proxy armatures
Remap: Freeze Source Armature did not preserve the animation
Remap: Ensure skinned meshes and meshes parented to bones are preserved when freezing the armatures animation
New anim baking: fix error with Blender versions below 2.90
Export: Bones rotations for Unreal broken with Blender 2.83
Export: Proxy armatures export was broken with Blender 2.90
Export: enabling deformation of c_toes_pivot lead to buggy bones export
--[3.54.17]--
New/improved:
Export: performance improvement for shape keys export
Remap-Export: Bake at light speed, x50 speed up! A custom baking function allows amazing performances (was using the built-in baking function of Blender before). Results are suprisingly impressive: when retargetting 4720 frames, it now takes 15 seconds instead of 14 minutes. Animation baking when exporting to Fbx also benefit from this speed up.
(however, due to code dependencies and optimizations, performances are still greater in Auto-Rig Pro with its dedicated, light function: x50 versus x3).
