v1.5.x BAO Bones

Ready to Rig, Captain!

The easiest way to rig and animate in After Effects! Setup and animate with IK in as little as 3 clicks.  With Bones, you can control a whole character on a single layer without needing any extra nulls or controllers.

Setting bones for an inverse kinematic chain has never been easier.

Testimonials

I love the fact that, although I am working with a PNG and not a vector, I can see no distortion or blurring on the body parts as I move them, which is amazing! I’ll keep playing with your plugin for a few days and it’s most likely that this will be my Christmas present for this year.

I tried Duik and found it to be more complicated to work with than this one and also own Rubber Hose but it doesn’t give me the same degree of flexibility Bones does (just in case others are wondering why your plugin is better). The movement flows so natural with very little effort!

Anyway, thank you for your fast support and for this awesome plugin!

– Mia Mateescu

How is Bao Bones different from other rigging tools?

1. Distortion
   Duik and other IK rigging tools rely on After Effect’s built-in ‘Puppet tool’ for distortions.  The main issue with this is that the mesh from the Puppet Tools is automatic, which means you cannot define it, and of course, cannot change it over time.  With Bones, the mesh is defined to fit joint bending, and you can modify it whenever you want. You can even use masks to get very accurate distortions.
2. Bones does not require straight arms or legs to rig
   With Bones, you avoid the hard work preparing and unbending your layers in Photoshop
3. An entirely keyframable workflow
   This is the main reason Bones was created. With Bones, you can switch the IK mode from Automatic to Manual whenever you want, you can even keyframe Parenting and Selection points. In other words, never compromise the subtleties of your animation!
4. Simplicity
   Bones was created for an animation feature film, which required the animation of A LOT of characters.  Bones makes it super easy to setup and manage many different characters.
5. Fewer layers
   With Bones, you can control a whole character on a single layer without needing any extra nulls or controllers. This keeps compositions tidy and light.
6. Speed
   Bones is a native plugin and does not rely on expressions, so it is really fast. Oh, and it is also GPU accelerated, so it is really, really fast!

Bao Bones New Features

• New in version 1.3: You can add a child to any bone.
• In version 1.4: Scale any part of your IK chain.
• Watch tutorial videos on both of these features in the Tutorials section below.

Smooth skinning

Bones gives you the option to use masks to define the distortion mesh to get ultra-smooth skinning without any artifacts.

Puppeteer – Control your entire character on one layer

Puppeteer allows you to control many instances of Bones from one layer.

Tutorials