AccuRIG vs Contour Rig Tools

AccuRIG is a guided, standalone auto-rigging tool for turning 3D meshes into animated cartoon characters and digital human avatars. It handles varied scan poses and models with different sizes, styles and postures, including realistic anatomy, exaggerated proportions, atypical limbs, obstructed shoulders and fantasy creatures with hind legs. Skin weighting supports articulation around hair, knees, elbows, hands, accessories and clothing. The tool can separate close-set fingers and rig varied finger types. Joint masking removes unwanted joints for partial rigs on incomplete limbs or non-standard poses. Finished characters can be saved in FBX and USD formats, with export destinations including Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, iClone, Omniverse, Maya, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder and Cinema 4D. AccuRIG runs on Windows 11, 10 or 8 with 64-bit support. The free ActorCore plan costs nothing and supports one mesh in an A/T pose. Multi-mesh characters may be imported but cannot be rigged separately in that version. Advanced features are available in Character Creator 4.1.

Contour Rig Tools is a spline-based rigging system for Autodesk Maya, designed for animation production and technical directors. Contour joint chains generate splines that serve as single deformer influences, potentially reducing weight-painting work. Its volume-aware spline deformation handles bends and twists and is designed to avoid pinching and candy-wrappering. Contour Bones include length and stretch controls, and bone CVs can be used as spline control points. Built-in IK includes stretch and anti-pop features, while constraints drive transforms and relationships between Contour chains. A Python API can create, modify, and query Contour nodes, accepting strings, pyNodes, and MObjects. The tool can drive conventional Maya joints for game-engine export. Version 1.0.12.1 supports Maya 2020 through 2026, except Maya 2023.0, 2023.1, and 2024.0; downloads are provided for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Animator Mode is free for animating with rigs and adding bone CVs. Creating or modifying rigs requires Rigger Mode, starting at $40 a month billed for twelve months.