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 use Blender build-in physics. They are fast but it introduces few 2 big limitations:

• jiggle can be seen only when animation is playing (try to adjust the physics when whole character is moving around, not fun),
• 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 bones (no need to play the animation to see the effect). Thus it is easy to tweak the settings - as you can grab character arm, move it around to see is its jiggle mass, stiffness or damping need tweaking,
• add jiggle effect on top of animated bones (like character limbs) - and not only hanging stuff. See the punching guy gif below, where jiggle was added to arms, neck and spine.

This animation uses jiggle blending - where I muted the jiggle effect strength around hit keyframe. This way character fists do not feel floppy at impact

The two cons on Wobbly WIggler:

• This add-on is written in Python. Its 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 (but then WWiggler support bone-to-bone collisions without having to setup and add custom collider helper objects)

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 it did not had mesh collisions, stick physics, animated mode etc)

Latest YT video showing how to use it.

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

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 3.06.2024, For Blender 4.x,

• Jiggle Groups support Library Overrides now,

Updated 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,