Blender Servo Animation
Blender Meets Robotics
Blender is an incredibly powerful 3D creation suite, but when it comes to transferring animations to the physical world—especially servo-based animatronics—the workflow can quickly become complex. That’s exactly the problem I ran into when working on my first DIY animatronic. Writing animations directly in code turned out to be a massive time sink. So, out of necessity, I built my own solution: a Blender add-on tailored to servo animation.
Why I Built It
This project started not as a grand vision, but as a practical tool I needed for my own robotics experiments. I wanted to animate a rig in Blender and then bring that motion to life using actual servos. The idea was simple: make Blender talk to the physical world without having to write tons of custom code every time.
Aiming for Flexibility
One of my goals was to make the interface feel like it truly belongs in Blender. That means using Blender’s standard UI elements so everything feels familiar to users. At the same time, the add-on gives you the flexibility to define your own servo ranges and mappings, so it doesn’t lock you into a one-size-fits-all workflow.
Key Features
The core of the add-on maps the rotation of Blender armature bones to real-world servo values. You can define minimum and maximum values for each bone, so the animation stays within the physical constraints of your specific servos. This makes it easy to work with a wide range of servo types and robotic builds.
You can export animations in multiple formats:
- JSON for general-purpose applications
- Arduino-compatible header files for quick microcontroller integration
And then there’s live mode—probably my favorite part. Hook up your Arduino via USB or WebSocket, hit play in Blender, and watch the physical servos move in sync in real time. No waiting, no exporting—just immediate feedback.
Integration into Real-World Projects
The add-on is designed to slot naturally into existing workflows. You can rig and animate in Blender as usual, and then either export or stream those movements directly to your physical setup. This has been incredibly useful in my own work—I’ve built three different DIY animatronics so far, all powered by this system.
Community and Open Source
One of the most rewarding parts of releasing this tool as open source has been hearing from others who’ve used it in creative ways. One user even used it to animate a robot that mimics the movements of a specific animal, all designed and animated in Blender and then transferred to a physical robotic system.
Blender Add-on + Arduino Library
It’s worth noting that this project actually has two components:
- The Blender add-on, which gives you all the new tools inside Blender.
- A companion Arduino library, which handles servo control and supports both real-time and exported animations.
Both are open source and available for download. Together, they cover the typical workflow of a microcontroller-based servo setup paired with Blender for animation.