AccuRIG vs MakeHuman

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.

MakeHuman creates customizable 3D human characters by blending adjustable features on a base mesh. Character targets let users alter traits from sex and muscle tone to earlobe shape. A built-in downloader provides access to community assets, and the application includes a render engine and parametric modeling. Meshes can be exported in Collada (DAE), FBX, Wavefront OBJ, STL, and Ogre3D formats; projects can also be saved in MHM format. Exporting meshes is one-way: MakeHuman cannot open those exported formats again. BVH is the listed rig format, and the documentation says MakeHuman 1.1.0 does not officially support animation inside the application. For Blender workflows, MPFB can communicate directly with MakeHuman instead of depending on file exports. It runs as desktop software on Linux, macOS, and Windows. The plan is free. The site says core assets including the base mesh, targets, and skins are CC0, with no paywall or email requirement for downloading.