2D character rigging software
Rig a 2D character with bones, IK and puppet pins
Rigging turns a drawing into something you pose instead of redraw. Premation has both approaches built in: a skeleton with bones, IK chains and controllers for characters built from parts, and puppet pins on a generated mesh for a single drawing that needs to bend. After Effects has no skeleton of its own and leans on scripts such as DUIK for this; here it is part of the editor, and free.
Free · AGPL-3.0-only · macOS & Windows
The panel that does it
The editor’s own panel, rebuilt on its chrome. It works: drag, toggle, queue.
How to do it
- 01
Bring in the artwork
Import an SVG with the parts as separate paths, or one PNG cut-out for the puppet route.
- 02
Build the skeleton
The Bone tool (Ctrl B) draws bones on the canvas, or Rigging ▸ Auto-rig places a biped or quadruped skeleton with IK chains and controllers in one step.
- 03
Bind and weight
Bind the layers to the bones; paint per-vertex weights in the Rigging panel where a joint bends wrong. Bend pins keep a rigid core so elbows fold instead of pinching.
- 04
Pose and keyframe
Drag a hand controller and the arm solves with IK; switch a chain to FK to polish angles. Record a pose and it is written as ordinary keyframes on the bones.
Questions
- What is 2D character rigging?
- Building a control structure into flat artwork — bones and joints, or pins on a mesh — so the character can be posed and keyframed instead of redrawn for every frame. The artwork deforms with the rig, bending smoothly across each joint.
- Is there free 2D character rigging software?
- Premation is free and open source: bones, IK and FK, biped and quadruped auto-rig presets, puppet pins and weight painting are all in the free download, and exports carry no watermark.
- Can I rig a 2D character online for free?
- Premation is a desktop app rather than a browser tool, so the rig and the render run on your own machine with nothing uploaded. The download is free for Windows and macOS.
- Should I use IK or FK?
- IK when the end of the chain has a job, like a planted foot or a hand holding a prop; FK when the motion travels out from the root, like a tail. The mode is per chain and keyframeable, and switching keeps the pose, so a walk can be IK while the foot is down and FK while it swings.
- Is this like DUIK for After Effects?
- It covers the same ground — auto-rig, IK/FK switching, controllers — as a built-in feature rather than a script, and the poses are plain keyframes you can graph-edit.
- Can a rigged character be exported to Lottie?
- Not as a rig. Bake the motion and export the vector shapes; the deformation itself is a Premation feature, not a Lottie one.