Bongo adds animation tools to Rhino 3D, allowing designers to develop motion around the models and views in their project. Keyframes, object hierarchies, path constraints and inverse kinematics support everything from architectural walkthroughs to moving assemblies and product presentations. Ready to buy? See the Bongo licences.

Rather than treating animation as a separate modelling exercise, Bongo captures changes to objects and views along a timeline. This lets you explain how an assembly moves, guide a viewer through a space or show different states of a design using the Rhino geometry you have already created.

Control Motion With Keyframes

A keyframe records the value of a parameter at a particular point on the timeline. An object’s position, rotation or scale can be defined at important moments, with Bongo interpolating the frames between them through a process called tweening.

The Keyframe Editor allows you to refine the sequence after those initial changes have been recorded. Moving keyframes changes timing, while additional keys provide more control over the motion. This makes it possible to develop the pace of an opening mechanism, a component movement or a presentation sequence without specifying every frame individually.

Organise Assemblies With Pivots and Hierarchies

Object transformations work around animation pivots, giving rotations and scaling a defined reference. Placing a pivot appropriately helps a door rotate about its hinge, a wheel turn around its axle or a component move relative to a particular point.

Parent-child relationships connect objects into a hierarchy. A child inherits its parent’s transformations while retaining its own animation, allowing an assembly to move together and individual parts to move within it. This provides a structured way to organise related motion rather than animating every component independently.

Guide Objects and Cameras Along Paths

Objects and views can be constrained to curves or other objects. A path curve defines where movement takes place, while look-along and look-at constraints control orientation or keep attention on a particular subject.

For architectural presentations, these tools can guide a camera through a building and direct it towards selected features. Named views provide another starting point for architectural animations. For product or transport studies, a path can define an object’s route while its orientation follows the direction of travel.

Constraint weights can change over time, allowing different constraints to influence the result to different degrees. This provides additional control when a sequence needs to move between relationships rather than remain attached to one path or target throughout.

Explore Linked Motion With Inverse Kinematics

Bongo’s inverse-kinematics tools work with chains of objects connected through parent-child relationships. A driver and goal define the chain’s movement, and the system calculates how the linked objects must transform to satisfy the arrangement.

Joint types include hinge, universal, telescopic and rubberband behaviours, supporting different combinations of rotation, movement, extension and scaling. The developer’s tutorials demonstrate applications such as robot arms and pistons, where related parts need to move together.

These tools help communicate the intended motion of a mechanism. Engineering assessment of forces, clearances and physical performance remains a separate part of developing the design.

Animate More Than Object Position

Bongo can animate layer visibility, object colour, gloss and transparency, together with material, light and sun properties. This extends a sequence beyond movement, allowing a presentation to reveal internal parts, change the appearance of a design or show a transition in lighting.

A visibility change can introduce components in stages, while transparency can help explain the relationship between an enclosure and its contents. Combining these properties with camera motion creates a more informative account of the design than a static view alone.

Try Bongo

Download the official 30-day Bongo evaluation to explore the animation tools. After the unrestricted evaluation period, it continues as an animation viewer, with animation editing requiring a licence.

Bongo forms part of the animation toolset covered on this site. The Rhino 3D plugins guide by discipline sets out what each tool covers, which ones need their own Rhino licence, and how the options fit together.