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About this viewer
Rig Checker
The Character XYZ Rig Checker opens a rigged character in a web browser and reports its skeleton: every bone by name, the total bone count, and an overlay drawn over the model so a bone can be found on the mesh. It also lists the animation clips in the file with their real durations and plays them. GLB, glTF and FBX are read on your own device and are never uploaded.
Works withGLB, glTF and FBX — the three formats that carry a skeleton.
Reports
What it checks
- Every bone, by name and in order
- The full list as the file stores it, with the total count at the top. That count is usually the whole diagnosis: a production character is tens of joints, and a export that brought a control rig along is hundreds. A 92-bone Rigify hierarchy and a 9-joint production rig do not look different in a render and are impossible to confuse here.
- The skeleton drawn over the model
- Switch the bone overlay on to see where the joints actually sit, and hover a row in the list to mark that bone on the mesh. Combined with X-ray — which stops the surface occluding itself — this is how you find a joint that ended up in the wrong place rather than merely misnamed.
- Whether the mesh is skinned at all
- A file can carry a full skeleton and no binding, which renders identically and animates not at all. When nothing in the file is skinned the skeleton tab says so in as many words instead of showing an empty list you have to interpret.
- Every animation clip, played
- Each clip with its real duration, playable with speed and looping, including takes that ship as separate GLBs beside the mesh. An empty list tells you the exporter dropped the animation rather than the player failing to run it. Clip changes are blended with inertialization, so a limb's motion carries through the cut.
Getting started
How to use it
- 1Open the viewerGo to character.xyz/3d-viewer. There is nothing to install and no account to create.
- 2Drop in your modelDrag .glb, .gltf, .fbx, .obj, .ply, .stl or .vrm onto the page, or use the file picker. The file is read on your own device — for a .gltf, drop its folder so the buffers and textures come with it.
- 3Inspect itOpen the inspector panel to read mesh statistics, materials, skeleton, morph targets, animation clips and texture budgets.
- 4Fix what it findsRun the validation report to see every issue against the glTF specification, then re-export and check again.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How do I check a character rig without opening Blender?
Drag the GLB, glTF or FBX onto character.xyz/3d-viewer and open the skeleton tab. It lists every bone by name with the total count and can draw the skeleton over the model. Nothing is installed and nothing is uploaded — the file is parsed by your own browser.
Why does my character have hundreds of bones after exporting?
Almost always because the exporter included the control rig as well as the deform skeleton. Rigify in particular produces a hierarchy in the nineties once the widgets, mechanism and organic layers come along, where the character only needs the deform bones. The bone list here shows exactly which ones arrived, and the names usually make the origin obvious.
Why is my rig broken after a glTF export?
The three common causes are a mesh that lost its binding and is no longer skinned to the skeleton, an animation that targets bones under different names than the ones exported, and a skeleton exported with no mesh bound to it at all. The skeleton tab distinguishes the first — it reports when nothing in the file is skinned — and the animation tab distinguishes the second, because a clip that targets missing bones plays with nothing moving.
Does this show skin weights?
No. It reports the skeleton — bone names, the bone count, where the joints sit, and whether a mesh is skinned to them — and it plays the animation. It does not display per-vertex weights or grade the skinning, so a weight-painting problem is not something this tool can currently show you.
Can I check an FBX rig from Mixamo or a client delivery?
Yes. FBX is read in the browser along with its animation takes, so a Mixamo download or a delivery from an outsourcer can be checked before it goes anywhere near a scene. FBX usually stores centimetres where glTF assumes metres, which makes the model measure around a hundred times larger — the camera frames from the model's own bounds, so it opens correctly framed regardless.
Elsewhere
Other checks
By format
Rigging is one stage of the pipeline
Character XYZ builds, rigs and animates characters end to end — the rig checker is the inspection half of that, given away. If what you found here is a rig that needs rebuilding rather than debugging, that is the part we do.
See the creator toolsDrop a 3D model here
or choose a file — nothing is uploaded
Your file never leaves your browser. There is no upload, no account and no server-side processing.