Animal Rigger ProAnimal Rigger Pro
Rig a four-legged animal in Blender. You click its joints; the add-on builds the rig, binds the skin and writes it out for a game engine.
What it does
You click about twenty joints on your animal: nose, head, chest, hips, the legs and the tail. Animal Rigger Pro then:
- builds a full animation rig, with legs that bend the way that animal's legs bend,
- binds the skin to it,
- gives you quick tools to fix the skin and to pose the animal,
- writes it out for Unreal, Unity or glTF.
A first rig takes a few minutes. You can move a joint and rebuild at any time, and your animation and hand-painted weights are kept.
The six steps
The add-on lives in one tab of Blender's sidebar. It walks you through six steps, always in view at the top.
1. Setup
2. Mark
3. Generate
4. Weights
5. Animate
6. Export
New here? Start with Install, then the Quick start.
Which animals
| Feet | Species in the list |
|---|---|
| Paws | Dog, wolf, fox, cat, tiger, lion, leopard, cheetah |
| Hooves | Horse, pony, donkey, mule, zebra |
The species sets the feet and gives the add-on the animal's usual proportions, which it uses to guess knees and ankles and to check your marks. For another animal with paws or a single hoof, pick the closest species.
Not in version 0.1: two-legged animals, bears, animals with split hooves (cows, deer, pigs), birds' beaks and elephants' trunks.
What the rig has
- Legs with IK and FK on every leg, and a one-click switch that keeps the pose. Foot roll, bank, toe break, toe curl and toe spread. Paws with toes and dewclaws, or hooves with a real pastern.
- Spine, neck, head and tail with follow and lock switches that keep the pose when you flip them.
- A face, if you want one: jaw, ears, eyes, eyelids, muzzle, lips, snarl, brows, tongue, and many small face controls.
- Twist bones and joint helpers, so twists spread smoothly and shoulders and hips keep their shape.
- Parent spaces: an IK foot can stay planted in the world or ride with the body, the hips or the chest, and switches without moving.
The rig is plain Blender. Anyone can open the file and animate it without the add-on installed.
What is not in 0.1
- Physics such as fur or jiggle. The face moves with bones, not a set of shape keys.
- Beaks and trunks.
- Windows and Linux are not yet tested. Version 0.1 was tested on Blender 5.2.2 on macOS.
See the release notes for everything in this version.