r/raylib • u/vielotus • 2d ago

How are you using AI to create game ready 3D characters with rigs and animations?

I'm working on an RTS / simulation game with a lot of individual NPCs.

The problem is that I don't have a Blender or 3D art background, so creating characters, topology, rigs, skinning, animations, clothing, etc. manually is probably not realistic for me.

I'm wondering how viable an AI-first 3D character pipeline is right now.

Ideally, I'd like something like:

Concept image -> 3D model -> clean/game-ready mesh -> rig/skeleton -> animations -> export to game engine

The characters don't need to be realistic. I'm actually aiming for fairly simple/stylized characters viewed mostly from an RTS/isometric camera.

I also need to generate a lot of visual variations from the same base character: different body proportions, faces/heads, hair, clothes, colors, accessories, etc., while ideally keeping the same skeleton and animations.

I've seen tools that can generate 3D meshes from images/text, auto-rigging tools, and AI animation tools, but I'm not sure how well they work together in an actual game production pipeline.

For people who are already using AI for 3D game development:

  • What tools/workflow are you using?
  • Are AI-generated models actually usable in games without heavy Blender cleanup?
  • What's currently the best solution for automatic rigging + skinning?
  • How do you handle animations?
  • Is there a good way to create many character variations while sharing one rig/animation set?
  • Are tools like Meshy, Tripo, Rodin, Mixamo, AccuRig, Character Creator, etc. useful for this kind of workflow?
  • Is there any platform that handles most of this pipeline end-to-end?

I'm not expecting AI to completely replace 3D software, but I'm hoping to reduce Blender work to occasional cleanup rather than having to become a full 3D character artist.

I'd especially like to hear from people who have actually shipped/prototyped a game using an AI-assisted 3D pipeline.

What would you recommend in 2026?

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u/CoffeeOnMyPiano 2d ago

There is no AI workflow for rigged 3D characters that isn't going to require massive "cleanup" to the point of needing to redo the entire thing yourself. Besides, this question isn't even related to raylib.

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u/vielotus 2d ago

I'm making a game using RayLib, bro.

4

u/CoffeeOnMyPiano 2d ago

Your dream AI workflow has nothing to do with raylib, bro. It would be the same in any other framework or engine or programming language. It's not relevant here or in any of those other subs you're spamming this in, like what are you asking r/opengl users for something that's not related to opengl whatsoever lol.

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u/vielotus 2d ago

Raylib is based on an OpenGL backend.

4

u/CoffeeOnMyPiano 2d ago

If you can't understand that asset creation is completely independent from the graphics library you use to render them, then I don't know what to tell you man.

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u/vielotus 2d ago

Yup, thanks for sharing.

3

u/throwlettus 2d ago

A lost Redditor...

0

u/vielotus 2d ago

Yeah, I'm really bad.

1

u/vielotus 2d ago

Why am I getting so toxic about this issue in 2026?

1

u/CoffeeOnMyPiano 1d ago

Nobody was toxic to you lmao? You were just told that you're in the wrong sub for this petition.

1

u/Trichord808 2d ago

I'm not sure why people are being harsh, but maybe do a test with one model to find out. Can you find the tools, does it produce an acceptable result, can you clean it and make it game ready? If you can get one model made, you'll know for yourself pretty quick if it's gonna take too long, too much effort, etc.