X-Muscle System

X-Muscle System is advanced, physics based tissue simulator for Blender.

What is X-Muscle System?

X-Muscle System is an add-on designed for rapid muscular system, tissue and other organic object creation and their physical simulations. Its main purpose is to help visualize better skin surface deformations according to volume preservation of the body muscles, fat and even skeletal bones. Add-on lets you focus on the design, creativity and to significantly speed up the workflow with extremal learning curve.

With X-Muscle System an artist is free to focus on the artwork and use effectively his time to create even more realistic, complex shapes and animations of characters and creatures. With its simplicity and integration with Blender’s native tools, X-Muscle System is powerful, easy in use and ready to start straightaway. X-Muscle System has been designed and written from the scratch and completed with the functionality you always wanted.

Main system functions:

  • animatable muscle parameters like size, properties settings and controllers
  • supports muscle Shape Keys
  • Body meshes with Shape Keys are supported
  • Body meshes with Mirror modifier are supported
  • body auto-weight painting function for muscles and controllers with scope control
  • auto-attach to bones with Auto-Aim mode
  • flexor and extensor muscle type
  • Muscle Pinning Manager and Bendy Muscles with X-Mirror support
  • advanced micro skin Controllers
  • allows easy muscle mirroring with intelligent X-Mirror feature
  • vast support for variety types of armatures and custom rigs including Rigify, Pitchipoy, BlenRig5 and Auto-Rig Pro
  • simple but powerful control over the parameters and settings
  • multiple muscles properties adjustment at same time with  real-time execution
  • integrated naming system with powerful renaming feature
  • physically based tissue simulation – jiggling muscles can simulate fat, or particular parts of the body like breast, buttocks, cheeks or skinfolds or rigid body like bones
  • materials management
  • display tools

These are only few features system provides. Refer to the documentation for full specification.


With X-Muscle System add-on purchase some exclusive materials  and services are provided:

  • X-Muscle System Blender add-on download access
  • access to the documentation, examples and tutorials
  • Anatomy Bundle XL human male skeleton*, horse skeleton*, cat skeleton* and carnivore dinosaur skeleton rigged models (human skeleton included in all variants)
  • Product Lifetime Support and Updates

Build high quality, realistic muscle structures with ease

Thanks to flexor and extensor muscle types creating biceps and triceps for your character was never that easy.

Work smart and fast – X-Mirror with single click

With powerful X-Mirror option there’s no need to duplicate work. X-Mirror will guarantee excellent symmetry for tissue’s shape, properties and behavior saving your effort and time.

Achieve the most complex shapes with Muscle Pinning and Bendy Muscles

Now, with bendy muscles, tissue shape will follow the bone chain of your rig. Thanks to that, you can create the most advanced and realistic muscular systems.

Improve all your existing scenes with the dramatic touch of realism

X-Muscle System works straight away and does not require any preconditions or additional setup so you can start adding great visual experience without reordering your scene.

Start your work with Anatomy Bundle

X-Muscle System comes with rigged human male skeleton model which allows you to immediately exercise your skills.

Bring your digital art back to life!

Changelog: 

Software and Documentation Updates 

versions 1.9.7

  • new muscle strip type added

versions 1.9.3

  • microControllers now x-mirrors correctly when muscles are using pinning, bugfix

version 1.9.0:

  • new Isolate Selected Muscles feature,
  • documentation Update

versions 1.8.9 and 1.8.9.a-e:

  • fix exception access violation when Multires was used without shapekeys, a

  • full support for advanced features: bendy muscles and muscle pinning including X-Mirror support, c
  • better mirroring accuracy when scaling is used, c
  • important bugfixes, c
  • X-Mirror support for Bendy Muscles
  • Anatomy Bundle added, c
  • allows to manually reattach muscles attached with auto-aim to other bones and still successfully bind them with the skin. (more flexible workflow in sacrifice of auto-weight painting), d
  • allows to successfully finish binding all the muscles to the skin even when corrupted microController mechanism is detected (accidentally deleted or omitted on muscle duplication), d
  • new Muscle Pinning Panel powerful Manager, e
  • enable and disable viewport/render muscle pinning, e
  • add/remove muscle pins feature, e
  • select pins toggle feature, e
  • reset selected pins feature, e
  • minor bugfixes, e
  • documentation update, e

version 1.8.7 and 1.8.7a:

  • improved Vertex Group management
  • added full support for rename feature after skinning for Vertex Groups and drivers
  • fixed multi-rename failed to work in some cases
  • fixed new muscle Shape is now added to active scene layer only instead to all selected layers
  • change skin model to Object Mode on Micro_Controller toggle
  • fix muscle remains selected after Auto-Aim create
  • fix remove drivers from skin after Micro_Controller disabling
  • muscles will now remain selected after Micro_Controller enable/disable toggle
  • Micro_Controllers will now work even if character object is hidden
  • Documentation Update

version  1.8.3:

  • significantly improved freestyle weightpainting x-mirror
  • fix tension value for Micro_Controller on  x-mirror
  • fix Micro_Controller Set option works now for any Mode
  • fixed x-mirror muscles if some its parts are hidden
  • minor bugfixes

versions  1.7.9 a-e:

  • fixed critical exception on Micro_Controller deletion, final fix, e
  • muscle size to scale along its local YZ fix, d
  • some default values for muscle properties fix, d
  • perfect symmetry final fix, c
  • perfect symmetry fix (muscle “System” part orientation now mirrored correctly), b
  • fixed property viewport refresh for selected muscle when all parts are selected, a

version  1.7.9:

  • Quick Start – Video Tutorial
  • added full Micro_Controller X-Mirror support feature with X-Mirroring Vertex Groups
  • Documentation Update
  • default muscle create type set to Manual at file startup
  • solved invalid orientation for Micro_Controller in particular scenarios
  • now X-Muscle System works correctly with scaled rig
  • improved pretty Vertex Group naming (dedicated unique naming)
  • fixed unintended settings deletion for all muscles in exceptional scenarios
  • resolved x-mirror with applying body to mesh inverted order
  • Multi-Set support for microControllers feature

Besides new features, this Update contains many bug fixes.

version  1.7.3:

  • added Select Single Muscle function and UI button
  • fixed cleanup orphaned microController
  • added Allow_Duplication and Keep_over_Subdiv setting to the UI
  • Multi-Rename feature added
  • Allow Duplications  feature added with support for X-Mirror and skinning
  • fixed critical exception on microController deletion
  • Documentation Update
  • optimized operation with subsurf in stack
  • Keep over Subdiv feature added
  • autobind microController to the skin feature

Besides new features, this Update contains stability, performance improvements and better scene management.