Auto-Rig Pro

By

artell

artell

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Auto-Rig Pro is a set of tools to rig characters, retarget animations, and provide Fbx export for Unity and Unreal Engine.

Rig features demo

Getting Started with Auto-Rig Pro:

Youtube Channel - Documentation - Frequently Asked Questions

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. For character made of multiple separate parts, it's best to use the Voxel Skinning addon.

Due to recent API changes, Blender 2.78c is required, 2.79 is recommended.

Rig fast with the Smart feature

Position the reference bones so that they match the character proportions. To speed up this process, a built-in solver will automatically try to find the body (bipeds only so far) and place the bones accordingly. The result can be edited if necessary (if the character is not a biped or fore more accuracy). Generate the final rig. The armature remains easily editable anytime. Check the product documentation and the youtube channel for more informations.

Plays fast, 25fps on these characters (using standard hardware): Anna, Kevin

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...

Finally, add your own bones over to complete (hair, or any specific needs...)

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.

Customizable UI: fully editable layout, buttons positions, colors, background pictures...

Remap

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.

Video: Remapper demo

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, and probably others not yet tested relying on the Fbx format. Shape keys are transferred as well. 

Three 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.

• Twist bones included in option
  
• Unit conversion to initialize the scale transforms to 1.0
  
• Unreal Mannequin bones hierarchy and naming
  
• Full facial, and advanced bones such as tweak bones
  
• Actions baked on the simplified rig
  
• Selective action export
  

Bring your poses to the next level!

The additive weights controllers offer a unique control over the pose. Located all along the limbs, they've been developed using an innovative system to operate on a second layer of deformation, for fine pose sculpting, cartoon effects, bending, stretching, etc.

Just use them instead of corrective shape keys, or as a complement. Below a typical leg bent before and after tweaking the secondary controllers.

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.
  
• Modular: only use what you need. Choose the number of fingers, toes, add optional tail, ears, breasts. Duplicate or remove limbs to rig multi-peds creatures.
  
• Easy bone shape edition
  
• Custom colors
• A clear, easy to use and colorful bone picker
  
• Fully cartoon compliant: Stretchy spine, legs, arms...
  
• IK-FK snap with autokey working, and snaps properly when unlocking all the leg/forearm rotation axis
  
• Knees and elbows pinning
  
• 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
  
• 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
  
• Compliant with X-Muscle System for realistic muscles simulation
  
• 11.869 lines of code craziness
  
• And finally, the best thing: by buying this addon 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

----[3.38]----

New or improved:

Fbx export: The IK bones of the Unreal mannequin can now be exported automatically (Unreal Engine only)

Fbx export: Added Root Motion export in option, to bake the "c_traj" animation controller to the armature animation ("root" node) (Unreal only, since Unity handles this automatically).

Skin: Skinning can now operate on low meshes versions, internally, to reduce the binding time of high-res meshes.

Fixed:

Rig: The pinning value was not displayed in the usual UI tab

----[3.37i]----

New or improved:

Smart: Added 1 and 2 fingers detection only, for simplified fingers model such as mittens.

Smart: For facial setup, bigger vertex size

Smart: Renamed "Delete Markers" button to "Cancel and Delete Markers" for clarity

Fbx Export: In Universal mode, the base fingers bones are now exported.

Fbx Export: The armature rotation can be initialized in option (the armature is imported with rotations values set to 0 in Unity). Warning, still an experimental feature, may not work if the armature object itself is animated.

Skin: The arms and legs twist bones are now perfectly skinned using the automatic skinning, using a weights decay algorithm based on the bones vector, resulting in a smooth gradient.

Rig: Cosmetic changes of bone shapes (shoulders, foot roll/bank, eye targets, and spine boxes replaced with squares to lighten the viewport)

Remap: Updates the presets

Fixed:

Smart: For facial setup, allowed direct object selection to easily select the eyeball objects.

Smart: Very low poly models could lead to an error for hands detection

Rig: Disabling the arms and legs bones and clicking Match to Rig could enable their deform property again.

Fbx Export: Disabling "Bake Actions" in Universal mode could lead to wrong export datas - Improved the Fix Fbx Bones Rotation feature - Mannequin renaming fix for bones named "root"

Remap: Now works when target armature are proxy

----[3.36c]----

New or improved:

Rig: Multiple neck bones is now supported, to rig creatures with long neck.

Fbx export: When trying to export a non-humanoid rig as a humanoid type, an error message is sent to warn the user.

Fixed:

Refactored the limb duplication and disable code, fixing some old issues happening in a few special cases

Fbx export: The neck_01 bone weights were incorrect when exporting multiple necks as Universal type

----[1.0]----

•  Auto Rig Pro Release!