AI Rigging for Animals in 5 Minutes — Animate Anything Tutorial | TOP 3D AI Learn

Rigging animals is painful. Weight painting quadrupeds, setting up IK chains, figuring out spine deformation — it's hours of tedious work even for experienced riggers.

Animate Anything is an AI-powered service that handles automatic rigging and animation for animals, insects, birds, and other non-human creatures. Upload your mesh, adjust a few bones, and get a fully rigged character with walk, run, idle, and jump animations — in about 5 minutes.

Animate Anything website homepage — Animate Anything — AI-powered rigging and animation service

Try Animate Anything

💰 Pricing

After registering, go to the Animate Anything section.

Free Plan

One rigging + animation for a single mesh. Enough to test the workflow and evaluate quality.

$25 Package

Usually enough to rig and animate 4–5 models, depending on complexity.

The free tier is genuinely useful — not a crippled demo. You can fully test the entire pipeline before paying anything.

🔧 Mesh Preparation in Blender

Before uploading, you need minimal preparation in Blender (or any 3D software):

Fox model setup in Blender — AI-generated fox ready for export — scale and rotation applied

Apply Scale and Rotation — reset them to 1
Set pivot to center — use Set Origin → To Geometry
Clean mesh — no holes or major topology issues

Rotation and scale setup in Blender — Apply rotation and scale before export (Ctrl+A)

Export to FBX with default settings — that's all you need.

📤 Uploading and Classifying

After uploading your model, give it any name you like. The important step is classification by name.

Model naming and classification in Animate Anything — Name your model and classify it — the AI uses this for animation matching

If your model is a fox, type "fox". The system understands common animals and matches appropriate animations.

💡 Pro Tip: Use Similar Animals

If your creature doesn't exist in the library (like a bison), use a closest alternative — like "bear" or "cow". The goal is to match movement patterns so the AI can animate more accurately.

📁 Choosing a Category

The site will ask you to choose a main category:

Category selection in Animate Anything — Select the main category — Four-legged, Birds, Snakes, Underwater, etc.

Available Categories:

🦊 Four-legged🦅 Birds🚗 Vehicles🐍 Snakes🐠 Underwater🦗 Insects

For our fox, selecting Four-legged lets the system automatically determine the best subcategory (like "canine and feline").

🦴 Rigging Stage

In the Rig stage, you need to manually adjust the generated skeleton to match your mesh:

Position bones according to the model's anatomy
Use the hints in the right-side panel (Bone Guide)
Color coding helps: Spine, Tail, Limbs, Head & Neck

Once aligned, click Generate Rig & Animate. After a short processing time, animations become available.

🎬 Generated Animations

The AI generates a set of predefined animations based on your creature type:

Animation download stage — Download your rigged model with animations — Idle, Walk, Run, Jump

🧍Idle

🚶Walk

🏃Run

⬆️Jump

Export options in Animate Anything — Export options — download individual animations or the complete package

✅ When to Use This

Animate Anything lets you skip the tedious parts of animal rigging:

No manual weight painting
No complex IK setup
Base animations included
Works with AI-generated meshes

Perfect for prototyping, indie projects, and fast pipelines for Unreal Engine or Unity.

For production-quality rigs with custom animations, you'll still need manual work. But for getting a character moving quickly? This saves hours.

Try Animate Anything