One Model to Rig Them All: Diverse Skeleton Rigging with UniRig
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Abstract (arXiv)
The rapid evolution of 3D content creation, encompassing both AI-powered methods and traditional workflows, is driving an unprecedented demand for automated rigging solutions that can keep pace with the increasing complexity and diversity of 3D models. We introduce UniRig, a novel, unified framework for automatic skeletal rigging that leverages the power of large autoregressive models and a bone-point cross-attention mechanism to generate both high-quality skeletons and skinning weights. Unlike previous methods that struggle with complex or non-standard topologies, UniRig accurately predicts topologically valid skeleton structures thanks to a new Skeleton Tree Tokenization method that efficiently encodes hierarchical relationships within the skeleton. To train and evaluate UniRig, we present Rig-XL, a new large-scale dataset of over 14,000 rigged 3D models spanning a wide range of categories. UniRig significantly outperforms state-of-the-art academic and commercial methods, achieving a 215% improvement in rigging accuracy and a 194% improvement in motion accuracy on challenging datasets. Our method works seamlessly across diverse object categories, from detailed anime characters to complex organic and inorganic structures, demonstrating its versatility and robustness. By automating the tedious and time-consuming rigging process, UniRig has the potential to speed up animation pipelines with unprecedented ease and efficiency. Project Page: https://zjp-shadow.github.io/works/UniRig/
Key facts. Cited by 45 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 16 Apr 2025.
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 14; 2026: 31.
45 papers.
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- 2025Puppeteer: Rig and Animate Your 3D Modelscited by 43
- 2025iTACO: Interactable Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Casually Captured RGBD Videoscited by 19
- 2026Motion 3-to-4: 3D Motion Reconstruction for 4D Synthesiscited by 15
- 2025Hunyuan3D Studio: End-to-End AI Pipeline for Game-Ready 3D Asset Generationcited by 13
- 2025PhysRig: Differentiable Physics-Based Skinning and Rigging Framework for Realistic Articulated Object Modelingcited by 8
- 2025Auto-Connect: Connectivity-Preserving RigFormer with Direct Preference Optimizationcited by 7
- 2025AnimaMimic: Imitating 3D Animation from Video Priorscited by 7
- 2026One Video, One World: Turning Monocular Video into Physical 4D Scenescited by 6
- 2026Engine-Native Editable 3D World Reconstruction with Objects and Lightingcited by 6
- 2025Stable Part Diffusion 4D: Multi-View RGB and Kinematic Parts Video Generationcited by 5
- 2026Skin Tokens: A Learned Compact Representation for Unified Autoregressive Riggingcited by 5
- 2025FairyGen: Storied Cartoon Video from a Single Child-Drawn Charactercited by 4
33 more
- 2026BiMotion: B-spline Motion for Text-guided Dynamic 3D Character Generationcited by 4
- 2025PoseMaster: A Unified 3D Native Framework for Stylized Pose Generationcited by 3
- 2026AniGen: Unified S3 Fields for Animatable 3D Asset Generationcited by 3
- 2025RigAnyFace: Scaling Neural Facial Mesh Auto-Rigging with Unlabeled Datacited by 2
- 2025Topology-Agnostic Animal Motion Generation from Text Promptcited by 2
- 2026Stroke3D: Lifting 2D strokes into rigged 3D model via latent diffusion modelscited by 2
- 2025HEIR: Learning Graph-Based Motion Hierarchiescited by 1
- 2025MimiCAT: Mimic with Correspondence-Aware Cascade-Transformer for Category-Free 3D Pose Transfercited by 1
- 2026MorphGS: Morphology-Adaptive Articulated 3D Motion Transfer from Videoscited by 1
- 2026SPRig: Self-Supervised Pose-Invariant Rigging from Mesh Sequencescited by 1
- 2026SK-Adapter: Skeleton-Based Structural Control for Native 3D Generationcited by 1
- 2026Follow Your Track: Precise Skeleton Animation Controlled by 3D Trajectoriescited by 1
- 2026ViP-Rig: Visual-Prompted Controllable Riggingcited by 1
- 2026UniMate: One Unified Model to Animate Diverse Skeletonscited by 1
- 2025Make-It-Poseable: Feed-forward Latent Posing Model for 3D Characterscited by 0
- 2026SkeletonGaussian: Editable 4D Generation through Gaussian Skeletonizationcited by 0
- 2026PhysSkin: Real-Time and Generalizable Physics-Based Animation via Self-Supervised Neural Skinningcited by 0
- 2026UNICA: A Unified Neural Framework for Controllable 3D Avatarscited by 0
- 2026GaussiAnimate: Rig Animatable Categories with Level of Dynamicscited by 0
- 2026Rigel3D: Rig-aware Latents for Animation-Ready 3D Asset Generationcited by 0
- 2026Fishbone: From One 3D Asset to a Million Controllable Editscited by 0
- 2026RigPAPR: Rig-Based Animation of Static Neural Point Clouds from a Fixed-Viewpoint Videocited by 0
- 2026AnimaSpark: A Feed-Forward Method for Animating Arbitrary 3D Objectscited by 0
- 2026BAT3R: Bootstrapping Articulated 3D Reconstruction from 2D Image Collectionscited by 0
- 2026RegHead: Non-Humanoid Head Blendshapes via Feed-Forward Registrationcited by 0
- 2026PlantRig - From Bones to Branches: Adaptation of Autoregressive Rigging Models for Plant Skeletal Reconstructioncited by 0
- 2026G-Skin: Learning to Bind 3D Gaussians with Generative Visual Priorscited by 0
- 2026A Geodesic Cut-Cell Prior for Neural Skinningcited by 0
- 2026BLARM: Animating 3D Objects from Video via Blending Latent Rigid Motion Primitivescited by 0
- 2026Branch-Centric Tokenization and Test-Time Augmentation for Skeleton Generationcited by 0
- 2026AnimalLift: Reconstructing Animatable 3D Animals from a Single Image by Learning Canonical Shape, Texture, and Fur Mapscited by 0
- 2026LatentReRig: An SDF-Based VAE with Dual Decoders for Latent-Space Deformation Conditioningcited by 0
- 2026Cepheid: Decoupling Scale from Structure for Cross-Family Motion Completioncited by 0
- 2026Cepheid: Decoupling Scale from Structure for Cross-Family Motion Completion13 Oct 2026
- 2026LatentReRig: An SDF-Based VAE with Dual Decoders for Latent-Space Deformation Conditioning21 Sep 2026
- 2026AnimalLift: Reconstructing Animatable 3D Animals from a Single Image by Learning Canonical Shape, Texture, and Fur Maps8 Sep 2026
- 2026Branch-Centric Tokenization and Test-Time Augmentation for Skeleton Generation5 Sep 2026
- 2026UniMate: One Unified Model to Animate Diverse Skeletons4 Sep 2026
- 2026BLARM: Animating 3D Objects from Video via Blending Latent Rigid Motion Primitives31 Aug 2026
- 2026A Geodesic Cut-Cell Prior for Neural Skinning11 Aug 2026
- 2026G-Skin: Learning to Bind 3D Gaussians with Generative Visual Priors3 Aug 2026
- 2026PlantRig - From Bones to Branches: Adaptation of Autoregressive Rigging Models for Plant Skeletal Reconstruction2 Aug 2026
- 2026ViP-Rig: Visual-Prompted Controllable Rigging30 Jul 2026
- 2026Engine-Native Editable 3D World Reconstruction with Objects and Lighting23 Jul 2026
- 2026RegHead: Non-Humanoid Head Blendshapes via Feed-Forward Registration13 Jul 2026
33 more
- 2026BAT3R: Bootstrapping Articulated 3D Reconstruction from 2D Image Collections4 Jul 2026
- 2026One Video, One World: Turning Monocular Video into Physical 4D Scenes30 Jun 2026
- 2026Follow Your Track: Precise Skeleton Animation Controlled by 3D Trajectories24 Jun 2026
- 2026AnimaSpark: A Feed-Forward Method for Animating Arbitrary 3D Objects9 Jun 2026
- 2026RigPAPR: Rig-Based Animation of Static Neural Point Clouds from a Fixed-Viewpoint Video4 Jun 2026
- 2026Fishbone: From One 3D Asset to a Million Controllable Edits24 May 2026
- 2026Rigel3D: Rig-aware Latents for Animation-Ready 3D Asset Generation13 May 2026
- 2026AniGen: Unified S3 Fields for Animatable 3D Asset Generation9 Apr 2026
- 2026GaussiAnimate: Rig Animatable Categories with Level of Dynamics9 Apr 2026
- 2026UNICA: A Unified Neural Framework for Controllable 3D Avatars3 Apr 2026
- 2026PhysSkin: Real-Time and Generalizable Physics-Based Animation via Self-Supervised Neural Skinning24 Mar 2026
- 2026SK-Adapter: Skeleton-Based Structural Control for Native 3D Generation14 Mar 2026
- 2026BiMotion: B-spline Motion for Text-guided Dynamic 3D Character Generation21 Feb 2026
- 2026SPRig: Self-Supervised Pose-Invariant Rigging from Mesh Sequences13 Feb 2026
- 2026Stroke3D: Lifting 2D strokes into rigged 3D model via latent diffusion models10 Feb 2026
- 2026Skin Tokens: A Learned Compact Representation for Unified Autoregressive Rigging4 Feb 2026
- 2026SkeletonGaussian: Editable 4D Generation through Gaussian Skeletonization4 Feb 2026
- 2026Motion 3-to-4: 3D Motion Reconstruction for 4D Synthesis20 Jan 2026
- 2026MorphGS: Morphology-Adaptive Articulated 3D Motion Transfer from Videos6 Jan 2026
- 2025Make-It-Poseable: Feed-forward Latent Posing Model for 3D Characters18 Dec 2025
- 2025AnimaMimic: Imitating 3D Animation from Video Priors16 Dec 2025
- 2025Topology-Agnostic Animal Motion Generation from Text Prompt11 Dec 2025
- 2025RigAnyFace: Scaling Neural Facial Mesh Auto-Rigging with Unlabeled Data23 Nov 2025
- 2025MimiCAT: Mimic with Correspondence-Aware Cascade-Transformer for Category-Free 3D Pose Transfer23 Nov 2025
- 2025HEIR: Learning Graph-Based Motion Hierarchies30 Oct 2025
- 2025Hunyuan3D Studio: End-to-End AI Pipeline for Game-Ready 3D Asset Generation16 Sep 2025
- 2025Stable Part Diffusion 4D: Multi-View RGB and Kinematic Parts Video Generation12 Sep 2025
- 2025Puppeteer: Rig and Animate Your 3D Models14 Aug 2025
- 2025FairyGen: Storied Cartoon Video from a Single Child-Drawn Character26 Jun 2025
- 2025PoseMaster: A Unified 3D Native Framework for Stylized Pose Generation26 Jun 2025
- 2025PhysRig: Differentiable Physics-Based Skinning and Rigging Framework for Realistic Articulated Object Modeling26 Jun 2025
- 2025Auto-Connect: Connectivity-Preserving RigFormer with Direct Preference Optimization13 Jun 2025
- 2025iTACO: Interactable Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Casually Captured RGBD Videos10 Jun 2025
- 2025Puppeteer: Rig and Animate Your 3D Modelscited by 43
- 2025iTACO: Interactable Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Casually Captured RGBD Videoscited by 19
- 2026Motion 3-to-4: 3D Motion Reconstruction for 4D Synthesiscited by 15
- 2025Hunyuan3D Studio: End-to-End AI Pipeline for Game-Ready 3D Asset Generationcited by 13
- 2025PhysRig: Differentiable Physics-Based Skinning and Rigging Framework for Realistic Articulated Object Modelingcited by 8
- 2025Auto-Connect: Connectivity-Preserving RigFormer with Direct Preference Optimizationcited by 7
- 2026One Video, One World: Turning Monocular Video into Physical 4D Scenescited by 6
- 2026Engine-Native Editable 3D World Reconstruction with Objects and Lightingcited by 6
- 2025Stable Part Diffusion 4D: Multi-View RGB and Kinematic Parts Video Generationcited by 5
- 2026Skin Tokens: A Learned Compact Representation for Unified Autoregressive Riggingcited by 5
- 2025FairyGen: Storied Cartoon Video from a Single Child-Drawn Charactercited by 4
- 2026BiMotion: B-spline Motion for Text-guided Dynamic 3D Character Generationcited by 4
12 most cited of 43 All 43 (JSON)
- 2026Cepheid: Decoupling Scale from Structure for Cross-Family Motion Completion13 Oct 2026
- 2026LatentReRig: An SDF-Based VAE with Dual Decoders for Latent-Space Deformation Conditioning21 Sep 2026
- 2026AnimalLift: Reconstructing Animatable 3D Animals from a Single Image by Learning Canonical Shape, Texture, and Fur Maps8 Sep 2026
- 2026Branch-Centric Tokenization and Test-Time Augmentation for Skeleton Generation5 Sep 2026
- 2026UniMate: One Unified Model to Animate Diverse Skeletons4 Sep 2026
- 2026BLARM: Animating 3D Objects from Video via Blending Latent Rigid Motion Primitives31 Aug 2026
- 2026A Geodesic Cut-Cell Prior for Neural Skinning11 Aug 2026
- 2026G-Skin: Learning to Bind 3D Gaussians with Generative Visual Priors3 Aug 2026
- 2026PlantRig - From Bones to Branches: Adaptation of Autoregressive Rigging Models for Plant Skeletal Reconstruction2 Aug 2026
- 2026ViP-Rig: Visual-Prompted Controllable Rigging30 Jul 2026
- 2026Engine-Native Editable 3D World Reconstruction with Objects and Lighting23 Jul 2026
- 2026RegHead: Non-Humanoid Head Blendshapes via Feed-Forward Registration13 Jul 2026
12 newest of 43 All 43 (JSON)