Rigify Animbox Addon
The Rigify Animbox Addon provides a set of tools (some are already in Blender but hidden) for a Rigify armature. Watching the teaser I couldn’t wait posting this article. Here is a kind off teaser for only the feature Objects to Bone. And it reminds me a little bit of the commotion addon with its offset animation but then extended for animated characters.
The list of features of the addon:
- Automatic Walk / Run Cycle for differently sized Rigs. ( Rigify )
- Mirror Tools. Cycle Creator.
- Tools for Selection, Keying, Resetting. ( Partially Rigify )
- IK – FK Switch for Arms. ( Rigify )
- Jump / Turns Setup. ( Rigify )
- Motion Path.
- Object to Bone ( Partially Rigify )
- Multiple Objects to Bone ( Selected by Name , Rigify )
- Bake Animation from Parent / Constraint (Object).
How to use the Rigify Animbox Addon
Best is to watch this video to find out how the addon works:
Here a few tips to get started:
- Enable the Rigify addon, which is a build in addon in Blender.
- Be sure to have an empty scene. (I noticed some hickups with addons related to rigify, not sure why, but this solved in my case).
- Press Shift + A > Armature > Basic > Basic Human (Meta Rig).
- In the Properties Panel, go to Object Data Properties tab. Under Rigify buttons, press: Generate Rig.
- In the Rigify Animbox addon, go to Misc (at the bottom) and press: Test Rig. This will generate some geomertie partented to the rig, so you see something.
- Go in Object mode, and hide the original armature.
- In the Addon, go to Rigify walk or run, and press one of the options.
So now you got a walking or running character. And to parent an object to a bone:
- Select an object (for example, bottle, gloves, etc) and position that close to the hand.
- Shift select the Rigify armature (so the bottle and the armature is selected).
- Go in Pose Mode, and in the Addon you go to tab: Objects. There you click parent / unparent.
- And when you run the animation you see that the bottle follows the hand.
Where to download the addon.
You can get the addon in gumroad. It’s offered for free, but you can pay what you want.
