Cartoon man in a teal shirt leaps between glowing blue neon squares.

Drivers 2.0 cleans up Blender rigs

Drivers 2.0 puts shape key drivers, rig UI panels, and action constraints in one Blender sidebar. Less hunting, more animating.

For those who don’t know the tool: Drivers is a Blender rigging and animation add-on that builds driver setups for shape keys, adds viewport control panels, and manages action constraints, all from one sidebar so you can stop spelunking in editors.

What Drivers 2.0 is actually shipping

Drivers 2.0 is a paid Blender add-on that groups three ideas into one place: shape key drivers, viewport control panels, and action constraint management. The pitch stays practical. You pick a mesh, select a bone, set min and max, then wire a shape key to a bone transform with one click. The product explicitly calls out “No graph editor, no scripting.” That alone will make some riggers cheer and others quietly back up their files.

3D cartoon man with a worried expression looking at a glowing outlined square on a blue background, with the words Smile, Angry, Thinking, and Yuk... around it.

Drivers also frames itself as a workflow organizer for animators and riggers, with a focus on keeping controls in a clean N-panel interface. That is the part that usually gets messy first once a rig grows beyond a face and two hands.

Shape keys without the ceremony

The Drivers tab centers on instant shape key automation. Shape key values can follow bone rotation, location, or scale in real time, and the listing includes support claims for Rigify, Auto-Rig Pro, and custom rigs.

Blender 3D viewport of a cartoon head with mouth rig; drivers panel on the right and timeline at the bottom.

That makes it a tool for people who build facial systems, create corrective shapes, or apply quick pose-based deformations and want the setup to feel less like a spreadsheet and more like an actual rigging task. The appeal is speed, and also staying orgnaized once there are dozens of relationships to maintain.

Drivers 2.0 also bundles bone highlighting and bone colour management into the same UI, so the rig can communicate what is what without relying on naming discipline alone.

Blender interface showing a 3D character and a Drivers panel, focusing on driving shape keys (Smile, Sad, Angry).

Viewport panels that behave like controllers

The Panels tab focuses on in-viewport control panels. It can spawn custom-shape bone panels in the viewport, with square, horizontal, and vertical control styles, and the idea is simple: drag a controller to blend shape keys without leaving the 3D view.

Cartoon man bending forward, ready to run, against a blue gradient with a glowing on-screen 'Run' option (Idle text nearby).

Text labels can be attached to panel bones via font objects, with type, scale, and offset controls exposed in the N-panel. That makes the UI layer explicit, which matters when a rig gets handed off to someone who did not build it.

There is also a master control option that adds a master bone to reposition every panel as one group, with offsets baking automatically when you hit Done. On top of that, a global lock can freeze panels to prevent accidental movement or edits before delivery.

If you have ever watched a control panel drift two pixels per shot because someone grabbed the wrong thing, you already know why that lock button exists.

Blender 3D rig with arms outstretched and drivers panel labeled Actions and walk visible on the right side

Actions get their own manager

Drivers 2.0 includes an Action Constraint Manager in an Actions tab. It can assign directional action constraints to any control bone and uses a viewport glow highlight to show which bone is being edited live. The product page also lists compatibility notes that mention Blender 5.x layered actions alongside rig systems like Rigify and Auto-Rig Pro. In the same listing, the details section lists a Blender version range of 5.0 to 5.1, while another compatibility line states Blender 5.1+.

Upside-down cartoon head against a blue background with a glowing mood diagram showing 'Smile', 'Angry', 'Thinking', and 'Yuk..'

Pricing, license, and where it lives

Drivers 2.0 sells for $30 on Superhive, on a GPL license. The add-on is developed by Weybec,and remember: New tools should earn their keep the boring way: install, stress test, version-check, and only then let them near production rigs.

https://superhivemarket.com/products/drivers
https://weybec.com/