BlenRig vs Rigify

BlenRig is a free Blender add-on for auto-rigging and skinning biped characters. It creates a BlenRig armature, a mesh deform cage and lattices, and pre-rigged weight-transfer meshes for automatic character weighting. The system is intended to provide a feature-film-quality rig with an advanced facial system. In Blender, users add it from the Object Add panel and work with its controls in the View3D sidebar; the Rigging Assistant includes automated guides.

BlenRig 6 v5.0.0 is described as working with Blender 5 and later, while the README identifies BlenRig 6 as beta. Version 5.0.0 added mocap compatibility properties to limbs and disables simultaneous IK/FK by default. The project uses the GPL-3.0 license. Its README links to a Discord community and the creator’s YouTube channel. The maker says sales of the separately sold Fredegund skeleton support BlenRig 6 development; Fredegund also supports automatic integration with Mixamo animations through the Mixamo Addon.

Rigify is a free Blender add-on that generates character armatures by assembling rig components from a metarig template. Users position the metarig bones to match a character and start generation through Blender’s Armature properties. The manual lists Basic Human, Basic Quadruped, Human, Cat, Wolf, Horse, and Shark metarigs. Bundled rig types cover spines, limbs, fingers, faces, and skin, while feature set packages can add custom rig classes. Generation duplicates the metarig, identifies needed rigs, creates instances, and runs their generation methods. The generated rig interface can switch visible bone collections, change custom properties, and convert between IK and FK. A user-provided Python text block can apply customizations after generation, allowing them to be repeated on regeneration. Rigify requires Blender and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It assumes one Blender unit equals one meter. The manual advises keeping the metarig, since removing it or substantially changing the generated rig can interfere with later feature updates or adaptation to breaking Blender changes.