“Quick Cut Out Character Rig” is an add on that automatically builds a ready to animate IK rig into a 2D character. The different parts of your character design simply need to be imported as Image Planes into Blender. They can come from any drawing program they just need to be exported as PNG’s. Apart from setting up the rig, it includes features like: Creating a Grease Pencil Slider; An option to quickly change the size of the controllers; An option to change between bendy bones and standard bones to achieve different types of deformation. In addition, it will take care of keeping the file clean, by arranging everything in different collections.

Benefits of using the add on:

I wrote this add on to automate and speed up the rigging process for 2-legged 2D characters. You don’t need to know how rigging works to use this add on, it can save you a lot of time.

The main advantages:

- You don't have to repeat the recurring steps of setting up an armature and connecting it to your design.

- Since this add on can rebuild a rig within seconds, this will allow you to make design changes at a later stage in the process thus making your workflow easier.

- The add on will take care of setting up the bones, creating all the needed relations, correct naming, creating controller, organizing the objects in collections etc..So you end up with a clean character set up that then easily can be appended or linked to other files.

-The tool is specialized for cut out, which allows it to work more precisely and is why it can place the bones on the right location by itself.

I believe the simplicity in executing this tool will help users without any rigging experience to quickly bring their designs to life. 

For more advanced users :

-it will speed up your workflow

-since the add on uses a non-destructive workflow it can be used to build a base rig and then manually expand and build on top of that rig

-it is also very useful for quickly testing a cut out design to determine where the design works for being animated and where it needs adjustments

-especially if you have multiple characters which you would like to rig, this add on will save you a lot of time

Note:

-the current version needs the design to consist of exactly all the body parts shown below; the armature is suited for 2 legged characters only.

Please have a look at the documentation for a more detailed description of the features of the add on.

What you will get

-The add on file (works from Blender 3.0+)

-detailed PDF guide on how to set up your character design in Blender and on how to use the add on

-file with a character design for testing

Please make sure to read the guide before using the add on.

Please contact me if you have any questions, comments or notes.

(For bigger projects, if needed, I can build custom versions of this add on for rigging numbers of characters of a similar type to automate the rigging process.)

I hope this add on supports you well in your creative projects. 

future plans with this tool:

-making more complex rig setups possible (like head turns)

- supporting Grease Pencil character rigging

-supporting a wider range of character setups