Animate Anything uses AI to rig your 3D characters
Posted on 2 October 2023 and upated with details of the new Blender plugin.
Anything World has launched Animate Anything, a new AI-driven online service for automatically rigging and animating low-poly 3D models.
It supports humanoids, animals, and vehicles, and the rigged models can be downloaded in FBX, glTF/GLB and Collada format, for use in DCC applications and game engines.
The service can be used for free on three models per month.
An AI-driven platform for creating web apps and AR experiences
Founded in 2018 by TD and former web developer Gordon Midwood, Anything World is an AI-driven platform for building and deploying real-time applications.
It is mainly used for creating mobile and web apps and AR experiences, with showcase projects including work with Atlantic Records, Ministry of Sound and Ubisoft.
It’s WebGL-based, so it works in any modern web browser, and comes with SDKs for integrating the platform with Unity and Unreal Engine.
Automatically rigs humanoid 3D characters, animals and vehicles
Animate Anything itself is a standalone service, so you don’t need to be using the rest of the platform: you can just upload the models you want to have rigged and download the results.
It works on quite a range of model types: as well as humanoid characters, it supports creatures, including quadrupeds, insects, fish and birds; and vehicles including cars, trucks and bikes.
File formats supported include FBX, glTF/GLB and Collada, so the rigged models can be used in pretty much any DCC application: the website specifically namechecks Blender and Maya.
Currently best suited to lower-detail characters
At the minute, Animate Anything is geared towards assets suitable for online or AR experiences: while you can upload models over 20,000 vertices, they are decimated for processing.
The rigs generated have bones and skin weights – since this story was originally posted, Anything World has added support for finger bones – but don’t currently have rig curves.
In addition, the platform currently doesn’t support props or officially support submeshes like layered clothing, and it doesn’t generate blendshapes for facial animation.
Updated 23 April 2024: Anything World has released new Blender and Unreal Engine add-ons.
Installing the plugins makes it possible to use the service from within host software, although the models themselves are still processed in the cloud.
Anything World plans to release 3ds Max and Maya plugins in future.
Price and system requirements
Anything World’s Animate Anything service runs in a standard web browser or via the experimental bot on its Discord server.
Updated 23 April 2024: Processing is done on a credit basis, with each model rigged consuming five credits.
Free Individual accounts come with 20 credits free per month, and users can buy packs of extra credits, which cost $25 for 100, $50 for 250, or $125 for 750.
Paid Micro and Pro accounts for Anything World itself cost $50/month and $250/month.
Read more about Animate Anything on Anything World’s website
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