Wobbly Wiggler

You are tired of manually adding secondary motion to your character? Wobbly Wiggler will do that for you.

Why another jiggle bone add-on?

Most of the other Jiggle add-ons are based on Blender build-in physics (they transfer movement from simulated empties to bones). This makes them fast, but it has two limitations:

• jiggle can be seen only when animation is playing (it is not fun - trying to adjust the physics when whole character is moving around),
• jiggle cannot be added on top of actively animated bones (they are good for passive/static objects like hanging stuff).

I wanted to have ability to:

• preview the jiggle on moved/rotated (with G/R keys) bones. No need to play the animation to see the effect -thus it is easier to tweak the settings - as you can grab character arm, move it around to see if its jiggle: mass, stiffness or damping need tweaking,
• add jiggle effect on top of animated bones and not only hanging stuff. See the punching guy gif below, where jiggle was added to animated: arms, neck and spine.

Right animation uses jiggle blending - where I muted the jiggle effect around puch-hit keyframe. This way fist do not feel 'floppy' at impact

The two cons on Wobbly WIggler:

• This add-on is written in Python. It's not as fast as Blender built-in C++ physics (but up to 30-40 bones can be simulated without problem).
• quality of collisions wont be as good as if you used Blender built-in sim (however Wiggler support bone-to-bone collisions > no need to setup custom collider helper objects - which results in cleaner workflow)

Example of Jiggle interaction, without having to to play animation.

For Blender 4.x use Wobbly Wiggler 2.x (and up) (for Blender 3.6 LTS and below use Wobbly Wiggler 1.1)

Features:

• assign jiggle preset to groups of bones - and tweak them all at once,
• blending control between: full skeletal animation > animation + jiggle (use Influence slider)
• simulate bones with key-framed animation - their animated position will be used as target for jiggle springs
• 'Interactive mode' - no need to play animation to see the jiggle effect in 3d View - helpful for tweaking jiggle physics settings
• 'Animated mode' - for baking your sim, or previewing sim on animated characters (requires animation to be playing to see the jiggle effect)
• 'stick physics' option - where segment movement affect its neighbors - looks more realistic compared to 'normal' jiggle
• 'Baking Wiggle' for baking physics to key-framed animation (option to bake to separate NLA strip action or override active one),
• 'Make It Loop' operator - advanced blending of animation start with end (uses position, angle, velocity and angular velocity blending for more realistic results - based on inertialization technique used in Gears of War)
• add-on supports: 'bone to bone' and 'bone to mesh' collisions - use bone envelope as collisions capsule shape,
• build-in auto-updater - no need to manually download zip file. Just click 'Check for Update' and then 'Update'

Same animation with and without wiggle effect. Adding these secondary motions, visible on right, would be time consuming (rigged with AutoRigPro).

Location: in right sidebar of Blender 3D View, Tools Tab (can be changed in preferences)

How To Use - setup in 3 clicks:

• enter armature pose mode
• select few pose-bones for which you want to assign jiggle physics (its best to use on short chains - 2-3 bones)
• Click [+] button in: 3D View Right Siderbar > Tools Tab > Wobbly Wiggler Panel, to assign jiggle physics,
• Press 'Run Spring Physics' - to see the jiggle in 3D View,

For animation preview - it is best to use 'Animation Mode' - this way jiggle will simulate only when animation is playing.

Documentation - bit old based on Hair Tool add-on docs (back then WW did not support mesh collisions, stick physics, looping support, animated bones etc)

Latest YT video showing how to use it.

Example animation from Zorak artist, with jiggle on: hair, breasts, skirt and earnings

Update 1.1 (22.04.2022)

• Fixed Wiggle groups names not displayed correctly and not being able to assign selected wiggle group

Update 1.2 For Blender 4.0 (21.11.2023)

• added Blender 4.0 compatibility (for Blender 3.6 and below use WWiggler ver 1.1),
• Fixed wiggle damping increasing with time,

Update 1.3 ( 23.01.2024, For Blender 4.0),

• Fix Bones Panel not showing correctly,
• fixed bone chain generation - they should be more stable now (less wobbly > more natural looking),

Update 1.4 ( 22.03.2024, For Blender 4.0),

• Fix slow-motion effect when using low stiffness,

Update 1.4 ( 22.03.2024, For Blender 4.0),

• Fix slow-motion effect when using low stiffness,

Updated 2.0 06.05.2024, For Blender 4.x,

• Wiggle Bones can be moved now,
• WWiggler use angular springs now,
• Added more realistic 'Stick Physics',
• Wiggle strength can be modified (an animated) with influence input,
• Support dynamic mesh colliders,
• Added option to Bake jiggle,
• Updated UI,

Update 2.1 (09.05.2024, For Blender 4.x),

This release breaks compatibility with previous version (2.0) of Wobbly Wiggler - it is best to update and use on new projects,

• safer way of restoring bone colors - when removing jiggle from them,
• Jiggle Groups are now stored in object (previously they were stored in scene) - Breaking Change,
• Collision settings now can be stored in: Armature, Jiggle Group or per bone - Breaking Change,
• new option to keep 'WiggleWrite' constraint - this way you can put another constraint after it - to e.g. limit arm movement axis (option is located in same drop-down menu where 'Draw Debug' option is),

Update 2.2 and 2.3 (15.05.2024, For Blender 4.x),

• Added option to mute jiggle groups,
• Improve performance - fix regression introduced in WWiggler 2.1 (slower BVH Tree calculations),
• Fix 'Remove Jiggle Group' operation - bones will be now reassigned correctly,
• improve heuristic for finding jiggle chains in armature,
• other bug-fixes,

Updated 2.4, For Blender 4.x (31.05.2024)

• added 'Make It Loop' that will make animation cyclic (using angle, position, velocity and angular velocity blending),
• Added Capsule to Capsule collisions for bone to bone collisions,

Updated 2.4.1 - 3.06.2024, For Blender 4.x,

• Jiggle Groups support Library Overrides now,

Updated 2.4.2 - 30.07.2024, For Blender 4.x,

• do not write Rotation Constraint into bone rotation, when constraint is disabled,
• properly handle jiggle unloading on: undo, save, blend load, etc, (I hope),
• do not ignore wire objects for collisions,

Update 2.4.4 - 16.11.2024, for Blender 4.x

• improved mesh to bone collision,
• smoother jiggle sim - should fix (whip like) overshoot for longer bones chains
• possible fix for crashes in some edge cases, when jiggle sim is running,

Update 2.5.0 11.3.2025, For Blender 4.x,

• More realistic simulation when using very low stiffness,
• expose 'whip' parameter (can be used to prevent to strong curling effect on longer jiggle chains),
• Fix Collisions sub-panel not being parented correctly to main WWiggler panel,

Update 2.5.1 - 23.3.2025, For Blender 4.2+,

• Use interpolated normal's for mesh collisions (for nicer quality),
• Simplify jiggle baking into actions,
• Updates to simulation - should give nicer results with mesh collisions,

Updated 2.5.2 27.4.2025, For Blender 4.2+,

• Tweak how baking works: try to store old active action into NLA track, if no other animation exist on armature (this prevents clearing all animation from armature - thus baking still bones),
• print more information into console about what is happening when baking and overriding action (like when old action is being moved to NLA track, or action keyframes are being replaced/added to, etc)

Updated 23.5.2025, For Blender 4.2+,

• FIX error: action from AnimData is read-only when trying to bake into edited NLA strip and no NLA window is there,
• FIX: being unable to bake action when object used NLA tweak mode,