Documentation
Read the documentation: guides with screenshots for every part of the editor, the
runtimes and the MCP server. The pages are also in docs/.
Features
- AutoRig: a layered PSD becomes an editable rig in one step: bones, joints, bending meshes and IK.
- Full rigging toolset: bones, weighted meshes, linked meshes, image sequences, skins, events, clipping and paths, with IK, transform, path, physics and slider constraints.
- Animation: Setup and Animate modes, dopesheet, graph editor with Bézier handles, onion skinning, pose library, face controls and retargeting between characters.
- Film workspace: 4K, timecode, an animatable camera, audio tracks, viseme lip-sync with on-device Whisper transcription, and renders to PNG sequences, WebM with alpha and MP4.
- Scene composition (new in 0.3): several characters on one stage as actors with NLE-style clips (trim, speed, loops, crossfades, their own audio), painted layers with parallax, and a camera. See Scenes.
- Python scripting and custom tools, and a built-in MCP server so AI assistants such as Claude can inspect, rig and animate your projects.
- Lossless skeleton JSON (3.8, 4.2, 4.3) and binary
.skelwith texture atlases, played by the JavaScript, Rust and Godot runtimes. - Built-in tutorials and demo projects (NILA, Rigbytron, and a scene with both).
Getting started
- In your browser: open the editor, nothing to install.
- Windows: download the portable editor or an installer from Releases.
- AI assistants: install Rigby2D-AI.mcpb in Claude Desktop, or see the MCP guide.
- From source (Node.js 20+ and the Tauri prerequisites):
git clone https://github.com/jaisurya-dev-art/rigby2d.git
cd rigby2d
npm install
npm run dev # desktop app; npm run web:dev for the browser, npm test for the tests
See Installation for every option.
Project structure
src/core/ Runtime: data model, skeleton JSON/.skel + atlas I/O, pose evaluation, constraints, playback
src/editor/ Editor UI: viewport, tree, inspector, dopesheet, graph editor, import/export, scripting
src/webgl/ Reference WebGL renderer for the runtime
src/mcp/ Model Context Protocol server for AI assistants
runtimes/ Rust runtime and the Godot 4 node (preview)
site/ Website and documentation site (GitHub Pages)
docs/ Documentation pages and images
branding/ Logo, icons, Rigbytron and NILA (proprietary, see TRADEMARKS.md)
src-tauri/ Native desktop shell
test/ node:test suites
Contributing
Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup, coding style and pull request process.
License
Rigby2D's source code is licensed under either of
at your option. © 2026 jaisurya-dev-art
Unless you state otherwise, any contribution you submit for inclusion in Rigby2D is licensed under both licenses as above, without any additional terms or conditions.
The editor distributes Pyodide and CPython for Python scripting under their own licenses; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
Trademarks
Rigby2D, Hoverlabs, Rigbytron and NILA, and the Rigby2D logo, lockups, icons and the Rigbytron
and NILA mascots in branding/, are proprietary trademarks of Hoverlabs. They are not covered by the MIT or Apache 2.0 licenses. Forks
and modified versions must use their own name and branding. See TRADEMARKS.md.
Disclaimer
Rigby2D is an independent open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the makers of any other animation software. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Rigby2D reads and writes the skeleton JSON, binary .skel and texture atlas file formats solely for interoperability, so that users can work with their own exported files. This support was implemented clean-room:
- JSON and atlas formats: implemented from publicly available documentation.
- Binary
.skelformat: implemented from the publicly documented binary layout of earlier versions and by comparing JSON and binary exports of the same skeleton (black-box observation of exported data).
No source code, runtimes, editor files or assets of other animation software are used or distributed with Rigby2D. Compatibility with files from any particular editor or runtime version is provided as-is and is not guaranteed.