Videos first? YouTube tutorial playlist
The tab has four panels, top to bottom:
- Animatica — the shot: model, character, prompt, Generate, and the review
- Pose — the character's pose: Set Keyframe, fingers (and Marionette's handles, when it is installed)
- Constraints — waypoints (where to stand, when) and pins (a hand or foot held in place)
- Settings — set once and left alone, with Viewport, Posing and Advanced inside
The Model and Armature are always at the top, so you can change either at any time.
Starting fresh? Click Add Ready-Made Character, then animate that character. It downloads the first time. You can switch to your own rig later.
Already have an armature? Pick it under or animate your own rig, or in the Armature field.
Want to see a finished shot first? The file icon in the panel's header opens an example scene: a character on a set, with the prompt already in place, ready for Generate Motion. The examples climb from a single gesture to a sequence of key poses. Opening one asks first, because it replaces your current file; it opens with scripts off. Use Save As to keep your changes somewhere of your own.
Several characters? With Follow Selection on (the arrow icon next to the Armature field, on by default), selecting a character — its armature or its body — makes it the one Animatica animates, with its own prompts and key poses. While a take is being made or reviewed, the character stays until you Accept or Reject; the review says Accept or Reject to switch to ….
With Animatica Cloud you can generate onto many custom armatures, not only the ready-made character.
Type what the character should do in Prompt (for example "walks forward sadly"). This is the selected Timeline block's prompt; more blocks go on the Timeline (see Prompt blocks).
Press Generate Motion. It is usually under 30 seconds; the first run after a while can take a minute while the cloud wakes up. The panel shows Working… Ns and a Cancel button.
If something stops a take being sent, the button greys out and the line under it says why. The grey line below the options says how long the take is, which frames, and how many key poses it will hit. A key pose outside that range is named in red: it will not be sent.
Under Generate Motion:
- Loop — the model makes the block a seamless cycle: a walk, a run, an idle. It plays on past its end, and ticking it ticks In place too, so the cycle stays on the spot. Loop needs a single prompt block, and cycles work best at 2–4 seconds: the block's length is the loop's length. It only appears when the model supports it.
- In place — keeps the character on the spot. Only the travel is taken out: the path it moves along (a line, an arc, or a curve). The body's sway and bounce, jumps and crouches all stay. You can set it before generating or switch it on and off while reviewing, without generating again.
- Variations — how many versions of the take one Generate makes: the same prompts and poses, performed differently. It only appears when the model supports it.
A new take waits for you in the Reviewing take box at the top of the panel. Play it in the viewport, then decide.
- Variation 1 of N — with Variations above 1, the arrows flip between the versions without generating again. Accept keeps the one showing.
- Seed N and Lock — the seed this take used. Lock it to get this take again next time; otherwise every Generate is a new take.
- In place — switch it on or off for this take. Switching it off brings the travel back.
- Generate Again — a new take with the same direction.
- Regenerate Active Block — with two or more prompt blocks, makes the selected block again and keeps its neighbours.
Accept keeps the take.
Each accepted take is added to the NLA as its own named clip, on its own track (Animatica: ), above the takes you accepted earlier, which stay where they are. A take with several prompt blocks becomes one clip per block, each on its own track, so every block exports as its own animation. The action you had before you generated is kept too, stashed on a muted [Action Stash] track, and your keys either side of the take keep playing. A kept loop keeps cycling to the end of the scene. The one exception is a take generated into a gap between your own keys: that one is filled into your action instead.
In NLA tweak mode, Generate, Accept and Reject wait: press Tab in the NLA editor to leave it first.
Reject throws the take away and puts back exactly what you had: your action, your pose and the scene's frame range. Keys you added or changed during the review are kept. Takes you accepted earlier stay.
A few things you can rely on:
- Accept, Reject and Generate are one undo step each.
- Saving the file during a review is safe. Reopen it and the take is still waiting, and Reject still knows what to put back.
- A loop keeps cycling after you accept it.
- What In place took out is kept with the accepted take as its root motion, so it is not lost.
Select two or more characters and the floating bar's Generate becomes Generate N Characters (or Generate 2 of 3 when one has no prompt; its tooltip says who is left out and why). The panel offers the same button, with a line saying how many generations it will cost. Choose how they are directed with Shared, beside the bar's Generate, or in the panel:
- Each Their Own — every character uses its own prompts, key poses, waypoints and pins. For a scene with distinct actors.
- Shared — every character uses the active character's prompts, each with its own seed, starting from where it stands: variations on one action, for a crowd. Waypoints and pins are left out.
They are sent together, in one request when the server takes batches; the bar's working button says how many it is making. Then the bar has Keep All, Redo All (failed characters go again too), a button per version that flips every character, and Discard All. In the panel, the review has a row per character, with its own ✓ (keep), ✗ (throw away) and ↻ (generate that one again). Keep All and Discard All act on all of them, and Redo All makes every waiting take again. With Variations above 1, each row has its own arrows, and All: next variation flips the whole crowd. In place acts on every take waiting. A character that failed is listed with the reason and does not stop the rest.
Posing with handles is Animatica Marionette, a separate add-on: drag a hand, foot or the hips and the body follows. Installed alongside, its handles, handle picker and settings appear in this panel and on the floating bar, and its edits key into the take. Without it, pose the rig with Blender's own tools, or describe the pose in words (Pose This Frame in Words on the bar), then Set Keyframe.
Set Keyframe keys the pose you are looking at and marks it as yours, so the next take is asked to hit it. The line under it says how many key poses the next take will hit. It works with or without Marionette, and with no server connected.
Use Set Keyframe rather than
Ion top of a generated take. Blender keeps a keyframe's existing type when you key over one, so pressingIon a frame a take already keyed leaves a key the addon reads as the model's own — it gets no ghost and is left out of the next request. Set Keyframe marks the pose as yours.
Jump to Key Pose (in the F3 search) steps the playhead between your own
poses, which Blender's keyframe jump cannot do once a take has keyed every
frame.
Generate Pose at Frame N makes one pose at the current frame — handy for blocking or fixing a single key pose. It won't replace your whole action. It only appears when the model supports single poses (Animatica Cloud).
The model does not move fingers, so each hand gets a shape laid over every take: Relaxed (the default), Gripping (closed around a handle) or Straight (as generated). Set Left Hand and Right Hand separately.
Your key poses are the plan: each one is a full-body pose the motion has to pass through. Settings → Viewport controls what is drawn.
Ghosts. Each pose you keyed appears as a ghost where it sits in the scene, tinted with the colour of the prompt block it falls under and labelled with its frame number. On the timeline, a diamond marks each pose in the Animatica lane. A pose outside the generating range is greyed out in the viewport and red on the timeline; widen a prompt block, or move the pose, to bring it back.
The Ghosts button on the bar switches them; Options sets their style (the mesh or the skeleton) and the frame numbers.
The root trajectory. Tick Root Trajectory to draw the path the character travels along, on the floor, coloured by speed. It is what In place takes out.
Editing the motion is Marionette's: the onion skin (the motion around the playhead, green before and blue after), the motion trail through the ghosts (drag it to repose the body, Smooth a wobble), the zoetrope (the onion skin spread out in space, each slice posable), Lock in Place (a hand or foot held on one spot for a stretch of frames), the reach of an edit through the frames around it, clicking a ghost to edit its pose, and Edit Root Trajectory. Installed alongside, these appear on the bar and in these panels.
- Waypoint at N — pins where the character stands at the current frame. Drag the circle to where it should be; the route between waypoints is the model's to plan. Grab it by its rim (it lights up white when the cursor is on it; the inside of the circle is left to the foot bones), in any mode, pose mode included, without leaving it. A click selects that waypoint; Shift-click adds it to the selection or takes it off. Dragging a selected waypoint moves all the selected ones; Esc or the right mouse button cancels the drag. The rim shows only with overlays and Show Gizmo on. Each waypoint is a row: its frame (edit it in place), its Facing (Along path, or Set with an angle), a button to go to it, and one to remove it. Face along the path also tells the model to face the next waypoint at each one; it is off by default, since the model faces the way it walks.
- Pin — holds a hand or foot on an empty, so it stays on an object.
Waypoints and pins belong to the character that was active when you made them. A root-path curve from an older file still works, and To waypoints converts it.
- Seed — 0 means a new take every time. The button next to it picks a random seed; Lock keeps the one the last run used.
- Quality — Best, Faster, Draft, or Custom steps.
- Motion Cleanup — stops feet sliding and hits key poses and pins more exactly. On by default; adds a second or two.
Viewport (its header checkbox turns the whole overlay off):
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ghosts | Draw the body at each pose you keyed |
| Root Trajectory | Draw the travel path on the floor (Marionette adds Edit Root Trajectory, and the motion trail's switches) |
| Frame Numbers | Label each pose with its frame |
| X-Ray | Draw poses through the character instead of behind it |
| Ghost Style | Auto uses the skinned character if the rig has one, the skeleton otherwise; force Mesh or Bones |
| Auto Refresh | Re-read the plan when you key a pose or move the rig. Turn off on a heavy character and use Refresh Ghosts |
| Rig In Front / Hide Skeleton | How the rig itself is drawn |
Posing (Marionette's settings, when it is installed): Solid Floor stops the handles putting any joint below the floor; Rest Pose clears the pose back to the rest pose and re-seats the handles.
Advanced: Guidance with its Text Weight (how literally the motion follows the prompt) and Constraint Weight (how tightly it sticks to your poses, waypoints and pins), and Blend Between Blocks (frames blended where one prompt block meets the next; 0 is a hard cut). The same number of frames blends a take into your own keys where they carry on past the first or last block; with no keys of yours there, the take starts and ends exactly at the blocks.
Prompt blocks live on Blender's Timeline as coloured strips in the Animatica lane:
- Click a block to select it; its prompt shows in the sidebar
- Drag a block to move it; drag its edges to resize it
- Drag the top edge of the lane to make the strips taller
- Double-click an empty part of the lane to add a block
- Double-click a block to type its prompt
- Click a waypoint flag (the row under the blocks) to select it and its marker in the viewport; Shift / Ctrl / Cmd + click adds it to the selection or takes it off
- Shift / Ctrl / Cmd + click a block adds or removes the block; a plain click on a block deselects the flags
- Drag across an empty part of the lane to select blocks and flags with a rectangle; hold Shift / Ctrl / Cmd to add to the selection
- Drag a flag to change its frame
- Click a key pose's diamond (the row above the blocks) to go to it and select it; Shift / Ctrl / Cmd + click adds it or takes it off. Where keys sit too close to draw apart, one diamond with a count stands for them all, and a click selects them all
- Delete / Backspace with the cursor over the lane removes what is selected on it (blocks, key poses and waypoints); with nothing selected, the block, key pose or waypoint under the cursor. Ctrl+Z undoes it
- Right-click a key pose to delete it (or every key pose its diamond stands for); a block's menu has Delete Key Poses in Block
- The + / − buttons in the Timeline header add and remove blocks too
Right-click a block for its menu: Edit Prompt, Enable / Disable, Regenerate Range (while reviewing a take), Delete Strip, the seed it was generated with (Reuse seed pins it to that block), Add Strip Between Keyframes and Add Strip in Gap.
A block with no prompt is hatched ("Double-click to describe the motion"): the model fills that stretch on its own. A disabled block is skipped entirely.
Non-Latin text (for example CJK) can't be typed in the on-strip editor — use right-click → Edit Prompt.
- Tutorial videos
- Discord community
- The ? in the Animatica panel's header
See also: Tips & limits