Contour Rig Tools vs InstantRig

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.

InstantRig is a modular auto-rigging tool for Autodesk 3ds Max, intended for keyframe cartoon animation. It offers auto rigging and skinning, automatic overlapping action, and a pose manager for copying, pasting, and flipping poses. Users can configure fingers and toes and add tails, hair, ears, and breasts to rigs; characters can be resized, and body parts can be stretchy. Animation tools include IK/FK matching and sliding, soft IK, knee and elbow snapping, and customizable controllers. The maker says animations can be baked to deform bones for export to game engines, using formats supported by 3ds Max. InstantRig does not support mocap data. Once a rig is created, it can be used with native 3ds Max versions 2014 or higher without InstantRig installed on that computer. Installation instructions cover dragging the installer into the 3ds Max viewport, manual installation, and quick launch. The free plan is free and provides one license for one user; each additional user needs a separate license.