Auto-Rig Pro is an addon for Blender to rig characters, retarget animations, and provide Fbx/Gltf export, with presets for Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot. First developed as my own in-house rigging tool, i’ve released it a few years ago and it expanded quickly thanks to great support from the community!
Rig fast with the Smart feature
For humanoid characters, 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.
Built for performances, allowing fast animation playback.
Character examples: Mike (free), Anna, Kevin, Nina and Alex
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. Updates are free and will remain free. Also make sure to read the FAQ and the documentation to solve common issues.
Modular – Fully Featured
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 limb 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:
Customizable UI: fully editable layout, buttons positions, colors, background pictures… The picker panel dynamically updates, so you can select any bone from the separate panel easily.
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. It’s universal: works with Auto-Rig Pro, Rigify, custom rigs… 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.
Game Engine Export
Auto-Rig Pro allows export to FBX/GLTF format via a dedicated module, to proven engines such as Unity,Unreal Engine, Godot.
2 export types: Universal to export the skeleton of any creatures, and Humanoid for bipeds only, with options for easy retargetting and root motion.
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 for UE4/UE5
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
“Soft-Linking” for cheap stretchy bone effect, Fbx compliant
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:
Updates:
Make sure to uninstall the current addon before installing the new one and restart blender.
–[3.67.21]–
New/improved:
Rig: Multiple eyelids support, allowing to rig a wide range of eyelids design
Rig: New eyelid tweak controller, to adjust the upper/lower eyelids curvature
Rig: New “Add Blink Pose” to setup a pose with closed eyelids, adding constraints for the current pose. In-between poses can be added on the fly for half-closed eyelids
Rig: “Add Hand Fist” was redesigned, it’s no more necessary to create the action and set keyframes manually (same as “Add Blink Pose”). Just click the button with fingers in a fist or extended pose to setup the controller and constraints
Rig: Apply Pose as Rest Pose now support animation preservation, to ensure animations do not break when changing the rest pose. Can bake one keyframe per frame (best accuracy with interpolated motions) or only existing keyframes
Rig: The eye reference bone can now have a custom parent, in case c_eye_offset must not be parented to the head/skull bones by default
Rig: Limbs are now alphabetically sorted in the Add Limb list
Skin: Shortcut button to show the deforming bone layer, if enabling “Selected Bones Only” (Bind settings)
Skin: New preference setting to remove existing armature modifiers when binding (so far, they were automatically removed). This is useful in case additional existing armature modifiers must not be removed (to mix with/without preserve volume for example)
Skin: Improved “Refine Head Weights”, smoother deformations in the neck/jaw area
Smart: better handling of errors when markers are ouf ot mesh
Remap: New DeepMotion preset
Export: “Show Debug Tools” has been renamed > “Show Extras”. These extra features are still hidden by default for safety, because the break compatibility with other editing/exporting tools of ARP
Export: New Unset feature to revert the Set Humanoid Rig/Set Mped Rig features under Show Extras. Setting the exported armature allows to send to the UEbridge addon
Export: Sort alphabetically actions in the actions manager
Export: The frame range settings are now displayed for GLTF export as well
Fixed:
Rig: Removing custom limbs was not removing the correct entry
Rig: SplineIK limb with custom names were missing Rig Main Properties
Rig: Incorrect default eyelids position
Rig: Remaining eyelids when disabling facial
Skin: Rest Pose error with VHDS skinning
Skin: Error when binding with eyelids borders set
Smart: Make sure to enable selection filters, otherwise they interfere with the addon if disabled
Export: Error when applying modifiers over shape keys, while a modifier is enabled on render level but not viewport level