What is Auto-Rig Pro?

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!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.

[3.75.55]

New/improved:
Smart: AI: Guess Fingers support for 4 fingers
Smart: When fingers are disabled, the hand bone tail is now snapped to the hand_tip marker position
Smart: New Elbow marker to improve accuracy of the elbow recognition
Smart: AI: Elbow marker implemented in the AI models
Smart: UI: A large hand icon is displayed, showing how many fingers should be recognized
Smart: AI: Optimized fingers AI processing, from 1.5x speedup to more depending on the CPU.
Smart: AI 1.14: Enhanced AI models. Support for curled fingers has been improved.
Smart: The neck height has been refined, it does not rely on the full body height anymore. It was not accurate with certain character designs (hat, bulky hair…)
Smart: New helper images to place the body markers
Smart: New helper images for optional markers
Smart: Ensure the character is properly framed once the “Go!” process has completed
Smart: AI: Improved correction of inverted knee direction, in case of extreme arched legs
Smart: AI: New 1.15 model versions
Smart: AI: Raised AI fingers samples to 10 by default for better results
Smart: AI: New 1.16 model versions
Smart: AI: New “Samples” setting to improve accuracy of body markers estimation
Rig: New Muzzle controller (Limb Options), to offset the whole mouth plus nose optionally
Rig: New “Set Custom Shape” function, to add a custom shape to a bone using the existing shape library (shapes located in Auto-Ruig Pro’s lib + current file). The custom shape scale can be set here too.
Rig: Init Scale: Do not require actions scaling if the rig is fresh new
Rig: Apply Pose as Rest Pose: Ensure new baked actions have fake user to avoid auto-deletion
Rig: Custom collections visibility is now preserved when Match to Rig
Rig: Show IK Directions: A point is now drawn at the expected IK pole position
Rig: Display bendy-bones as is (Blender 4.5 and above)
Rig: New “Preserve Shape” option for Ear and Bendy-Bones limbs
Rig: Tail: Now supports custom names
Rig: A master Auto-Rig Pro armature collection can now be created when a name is defined in the addon preferences
Rig: Preferences: X-Ray/In Front display mode can now be enabled in the addon preferences
Rig: The fingers RotFromScale parameter is now limb level (arm), instead of object (full rig). Requires a rig update.
Rig: Mouth: Lips Amount can now be set to zero to remove all lips (jaw only)
Skin: The feature that auto-updates arms and legs twist weights when changing Secondary Controllers, now supports the switch from/to Bendy-Bones secondaries. Multiple twist vertex groups are generated or merged together on the fly. Uses same functions as the Smooth Twist Weights feature.
Skin: Arm and leg twist weights are now automatically resampled on skinned vertices when Match to Rig, if the twist count has changed. This avoids to re-bind manually.
Skin: Twist weights resampling now handles cases where twist weights are not yet created. It generates twist weights out of stretch weights only
Export: Unity: Convert Armature Axes is now enabled automatically when switching to Unity engine, to zero out the skeleton rotation
Export: Add Dummy Mesh is enabled by default for Unity, otherwise Unity won’t import the root node when the file contains only animations
Export: Do not export non-deforming kilt bones
Export: GLTF: Exposed vertex colors settings
Export: New Quick Export button to export with previous settings instantly, skipping the export menu.
Remap: Redefine Rest Pose: With “Preserve” disabled, all actions that are enabled in “Multiple Source Anims” are now baked with the new rest pose

Fixed:
Smart: AI: Support for ACES color profile
Smart: Fix phalanges with incorrect roll
Smart: AI: Ensure multi-view is turned off
Smart: Error when wrist detection is failing due to low-poly topology
Rig: Apply Pose as Rest Pose: Error when Kilt limbs had more than one subdivision, while reference bones were not subdivided
Rig: jawbone_track bone not parented to c_skull_01
Rig: Tagged feather bones with a custom prop, was missing for Dupli Limb
Rig: Error handling when transferring vertex group with invalid ID
Rig: Error in leg_update_vgroups(), missing thigh_ref variable
Rig: Wrong leg dict called in parent_retarget()
Rig: Apply Pose as Rest Pose: Action slot not assigned automatically, leading to erroneous baking
Rig: Ensure eyelid controllers belong to the Secondary collection
Rig: Import Rig Data was always importing the limb options even if disabled
Rig: Removed superfluous body_mid collection created from preset files
Rig: The c_arm_twist_offset bone was missing the color group
Rig: Apply Pose as Rest Pose: Preserve Anim was missing support of ChildOf constraints
Rig: Renamed incorrect ‘c_’ prefix for non-controller bones. A rig update must be performed on old rigs (click “Update Required” button)
Rig: Leg Options: The joint fans “Set” value was not saved properly (typo error)
Rig: Fist: Rot from Scale was no more supported with latest finger name changes
Rig: Foot bank/heel bones were no more aligned correctly with latest name changes
Rig: Apply Pose- Preserve Anim: Fingers Rot from Scale was not supported. Fixed, but scale keyframes are now reset to 1
RigTools: Baking arm IK to FK was giving incorrect hand rotation. Error introduced recently, while snapping to the deforming bone. Now get the target bone rotation directly from the rotIK constraint
RigTools: Multi-limb selection was not reset when baking FK > IK legs
Skin: Error introduced in previous release, leading to missing vertex groups when binding (e.g heel vertices not bound)
Version: Compatibility issue when assigning actions on old files, missing slots
Remap: Ensure fingers are switched to FK, since IK is not supported
Remap: Clean FK Rotation was broken due to latest changes with multi selection mode
Remap: Some ARP controllers were erroneously skipped from the bones list such as c_foot_roll_cursor
Remap: Error when binding/unbinding, if the target armature had no animation data assigned yet
Remap: Build Bones List: Forearm bones not recognized automatically due to a logical pitfall
Remap: The bones diff matrix was not evaluated properly in case of non-normalized scale, resulting in wrong fingers retargeting when the RotFromScale setting was used
Export: Children objects that were hidden were still exported, while the root hidden object is not
Export: Always apply nodes and normals types modifiers, since Units x100 won’t comply otherwise
Export: GLTF: One file per ActionList was not exporting actions
Export: Humanoid: Syntax issue, wrong indentation that was leading to operate vertex groups modifications on non-skinned mesh as well
Export: Corrupted vertex group index in set_humanoid and set_mped
Export: Humanoid: Incorrect eyebrow bones parent when eyebrow masters were enabled
Export: Check-Fix Rig: The stretch controller of 3 bones legs was not yet evaluated
Export: Case where the rig is local, but a mesh parented to a bone is linked (override), was not properly supported, modifiers could not be applied
Misc: Typo error in the properties registration