Quick start

This walk-through takes a layered character from a PSD to a looping animation and an export a game can load. It takes about ten minutes. You need a PSD with one layer per body part (head, torso, upper arm, forearm, hand, thigh, shin, foot, and so on). No PSD at hand? Open a demo instead (File ▸ Open demo) and skip to step 4.

Tip

Prefer to learn by doing inside the editor? Help ▸ Tutorials has hands-on lessons that point at each button and move on as you work. The first one starts with a 4-minute tour.

#1. Import the artwork

Open the editor and choose File ▸ Import PSD…. Every pixel layer becomes an image in its own slot, exactly where it was drawn. Hidden layers are imported hidden.

A layered PSD of NILA imported into Rigby2D: every layer is an image on the root bone — After File ▸ Import PSD: the layers are in place, but nothing is rigged yet

Layer names matter for the next step. upperarm_l, L Upper Arm and arm.left.upper all work; see naming layers.

#2. Rig it with AutoRig

Choose File ▸ AutoRig artwork…. The dialog lists each layer with the part and side AutoRig found for it. Fix any that are wrong, or choose leave unrigged, then press Generate rig.

The AutoRig dialog listing every layer with its detected body part and side — Check the detected parts, then Generate rig

AutoRig builds a spine, neck and head, arms and legs with IK targets, small face bones, and turns bending parts (a torso, a one-piece arm) into weighted meshes. It is one undo step, and everything it makes is ordinary rig data you can edit.

NILA after AutoRig: bones drawn over the artwork, from the hips to the head, arms and legs — The generated rig: bones, IK targets and a bending torso mesh

#3. Check the rig

Select Rotate in the viewport toolbar (or press C) and drag a bone: its children and their images follow. Things to look at:

Does the head turn at the neck, and do the arms bend at the elbows?
Do the images sit in the right draw order? Select a slot in the tree and use Draw in front / Draw behind.
Want the knee to bend the other way? Select the leg's IK constraint in the tree and flip Bend.

Undo (Ctrl+Z) puts back anything you did not mean to change. You are still in Setup mode, so these edits change the rig's rest pose.

#4. Make an animation

Press Tab to switch to Animate mode. The viewport gets a red border.
In the timeline, press + New and name the animation idle.
Set its Length to 2 seconds.
At frame 0, select the chest bone, rotate it a little and press K to key the change. A diamond appears in the dopesheet.
Move the time cursor to frame 30 (click the ruler, or press R and F to step), rotate the chest the other way and press K again.
Go to the last frame and key the chest back to where it started, so the loop is seamless.
Press Space to play. Press it again to stop.

The dopesheet: rows of keys for each bone channel and image swap, with the time cursor — Each row is a bone channel or image swap; diamonds are keys

Tip

Turn on Auto key in the viewport toolbar and every change sets keys right away, without pressing K.

Smooth the motion with easing: right-click a key and choose Ease in-out, or open the Graph view to shape the curve with Bézier handles. See Graph editor.

#5. Save and export

File ▸ Save (Ctrl+S) writes name.rigby: the whole project with its images in one file. Reopen it any time with File ▸ Open.
File ▸ Export JSON + atlas… (Ctrl+E) writes name.json, name.atlas and name.png for a game. Export .skel + atlas writes the compact binary format instead.

Then play it in your game, or switch to the Film workspace and render a video.

#Next steps

The interface: every panel, mode and tool.
Bones, slots and attachments: rigging by hand.
Poses and face controls: expressions and mouth shapes.
Lip-sync: make the character talk from an audio file.