Contour Rig Tools vs MakeHuman

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.

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.