After Effects extension

Less rigging.
More animating.

Rigsmith reads your layered character with the power of a frontier AI vision model and builds a real Duik rig in a few minutes — bones, IK, controllers, all of it. You animate; it does the setup.

Rig in a few minutes A real Duik rig 7-day money-back
The part nobody signed up for

Rigging is the tax you pay before you get to animate.

Every cut-out character is the same forty clicks — every time, before a single frame moves.

Now run that for a cast of twelve — six hours of the exact same setup before a single character moves, and none of it ever shows up on screen.

What Rigsmith does

It reads the character, then wires it like you would — only faster.

Drop in a character — one body part per layer — and hit rig. Rigsmith reads the geometry and the pixels, finds every joint, sets clean anchors, builds real Duik bones, wires the controllers, and checks each one holds. Headless, in a few minutes. What took half an hour now takes two — character after character.

How it works

Three steps.
The last one is the fun part.

01Bring a layered characterOne body part per layer — the way you'd build any cut-out.
02Hit rigJoints, bones, controllers — verified, headless, in a few minutes.
03Pose & animateA real Duik rig, ready. Grab a goal and go.
Under the hood

A real rig.
Measured, not guessed.

Joints that are measured

Computed from the artwork — shoulders on the shoulder, not floating mid-arm.

A real Duik rig, not a toy

Real bones, IK, controllers and anchors, built the way Duik expects.

Every character is different

Tall, squat, stylised or realistic — it measures each one instead of forcing a template.

Built for a whole cast

Rig one, reset, rig the next — a scene of characters stops being a lost afternoon.

Headless — no GUI clicking

Drives the rig through the project directly. Never fights you for the cursor.

Lives in After Effects

A native panel on your active comp. No export/import dance.

One character after another — every build, every proportion

Why a frontier model

Rigging is a seeing problem.

Placing joints well isn't mechanical — it's judgment. A weaker model mis-reads the character and hands you a rig you fix by hand. A frontier model sees it right the first time.

Your character
Opus reads it
Clean rig
The math per character
~30 min
rigging by hand, every character
under 50¢
of Opus vision, once, on your own plan
~2 min
start to a posed, verified rig

Now multiply by a cast. Paying for the model that gets it right beats saving pennies on the one that makes you do it twice.

No Claude account? Rigsmith still rigs from the artwork's geometry — Opus just turns a decent rig into a clean one. Recommended, not required.

Where it's headed

Start with rigging.
It only gets better from here.

Buy now and you get free updates for life — and a front-row seat as the rest arrives.

Now · shipping

Duik rigging — Angela & Bassel

Full auto-rig — joints, bones, IK, controllers, verified.

Next

Bring your own AI

Smart Rig on OpenAI (Codex) & Gemini too — not just Claude.

Exploring

Controls & sliders

Auto-built controls that make characters easy to animate.

Pricing

Buy it once. Rig forever.

No subscription, no per-rig fees. The AI runs on your own Claude login, so there's nothing to meter. Pay once — and if it's not for you, a 7-day money-back guarantee.

Standard
$29 once
1 device
  • Full Duik auto-rigging — Angela & Bassel 2
  • Unlimited characters & rigs
  • Free lifetime updates
  • Runs on your own Claude login
Get Standard
Two machines
Duo
$50 once Save 14%
2 devices · vs $58 for two singles
  • Everything in Standard
  • Activate on two machines — laptop & studio
  • Move a seat between machines anytime
  • One key, one-time, for both
Get Duo

7-day money-back guarantee — rig your real characters; not for you? Email us for a full refund.

Runs in After Effects · connect your own Claude login (Pro or Max) for the Opus vision that gives the cleanest rigs — not required.

Get started

Installed in two minutes.

Rigsmith is a native After Effects extension (a .zxp). Download it, install, and paste your license key — Quick rig works right away.

Prerequisite · install this first

Duik (free) must be installed in After Effects — Rigsmith drives it to build the rig. Works with Duik Angela (v17+, recommended) or the classic Duik Bassel 2 — pick which you have in the panel's Settings.

Duik is free and open-source, made by RxLaboratory — Rigsmith would not exist without it. If it saves you time, please consider donating to them. We are independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by RxLaboratory.

Download Rigsmith · .zxp Windows & macOS · After Effects 2022+
STEP 01

Install the .zxp

Open the downloaded file with a free ZXP installer — the aescripts ZXP installer or Anastasiy's Extension Manager. (Adobe retired the built-in one.)

STEP 02

Open the panel

In After Effects: Window → Extensions → Rigsmith. It docks like any other panel.

STEP 03

Activate

Paste your license key into the panel. Quick rig runs immediately; connect Claude in Settings for Smart rig.

Questions

The honest answers.

What kind of characters does Rigsmith rig?
2D cut-out characters where each body part is on its own layer — the standard way you'd build a character for Duik in After Effects. One part per layer is the only hard requirement. For the best result we recommend naming the limb layers (arm, forearm, hand, thigh…): the no-AI Quick Rig relies on those names to read the skeleton, and while Smart Rig can name unnamed layers from the artwork, that automatic naming isn't always perfect — clear names still give the cleanest, most accurate rig.
Can it rig tails, tentacles, or extra appendages?
Standard limbs and spines — bipeds and humanoid cut-outs — are the sweet spot and rig cleanly. Four-legged and winged characters do rig, but they are less tested, so treat them as promising rather than proven. Rigging bending appendages like tails and tentacles is experimental and off by default: to try it, ask for it explicitly in the scope box (e.g. “rig the tail”). It's still under active development, so we don't yet recommend relying on it for finished work.
Which version of Duik do I need — is Duik Bassel OK?
Both work. Rigsmith supports RxLaboratory's current Duik Angela (v17+) and the classic Duik Bassel 2 (v16) — choose which one you have in the panel's Settings; Angela is the recommended default. Either is free from RxLaboratory.
Do I need my own Claude account?
Not to get started — Rigsmith can rig from the artwork's geometry on its own and will do its best without any AI connected. But the tricky judgment calls are where a frontier vision model earns its place, so for the cleanest, most consistent rigs we strongly recommend connecting your own Claude Code login (Pro or Max). It runs on your subscription, so there's no per-rig metering and no surprise bill from us — your Rigsmith license just unlocks the extension.
Why Opus, specifically?
Two reasons. Quality: placing joints well is a seeing problem, and Opus is a frontier vision model — we tested Sonnet, and it isn't in the same league for reading a character. Cost: running Opus through your own Claude plan works out roughly 2–2.5× cheaper than the metered API, with no rate-limit surprises. OpenAI and Gemini support is on the list to test.
Is this just placing puppet pins for me?
No — it builds a real, production Duik rig: measured joints, clean anchors, real bones, IK, and controllers, then it verifies each joint holds. It does the full setup you'd do by hand, headless, in a couple of minutes. What you get is ready to animate, not a rough draft.
What's the difference between Standard and Duo?
Just the number of devices. Standard ($29) activates on one machine; Duo ($50) activates on two — for anyone who bounces between a laptop and a studio workstation. Both are one-time purchases with the same full feature set, and you can release and move a seat between machines whenever you need.
What's on the roadmap?
Smart Rig on more AI providers next — OpenAI (Codex) and Gemini, not just Claude; then auto-built controls and sliders that make characters genuinely easy to animate. Buying now gets you free lifetime updates.

Stop rigging.
Start animating.

Get back a real Duik rig in a few minutes, and spend your day on the part you actually love.
Rig your own characters — risk-free,
with a 7-day money-back guarantee.

Get Rigsmith
Ideas & collaboration

Got an idea? Let's build it.

Rigsmith gets better when animators tell us what they need. Have a feature idea, a workflow that'd save you hours, or want to team up on something? Send it over — we read every message and reply by email.