One of the most important shifts when working in Mantis is understanding that it operates in a declarative way.
Traditional manual rigging is procedural. You create and parent bones in a specific order, usually building from deform bones (DEF) upward into higher-level control structures. For example, in Rigify, a simple FK chain with tweak bones often follows this order:
DEF → ORG → TWEAK → FK
In Mantis, the order is reversed. Because the system is declarative, rigs are defined from the top-level controls down to the deform bones:
FK → TWEAK → ORG → DEF
This ensures that the rig is always generated consistently, no matter how many times you rebuild it. You are declaring the structure of the rig rather than constructing it step-by-step.
Mantis introduces two custom editor windows inside Blender:
It’s important to understand that these are distinct editors — they serve different purposes and should not be confused with one another. One issued for declaring Mantis trees while the other is dedicated to editing and declaring Mantis Schemas.
The Rigging Nodes Editor is where you build your main Mantis node trees.
Think of these as your master rigs or components, composed of node groups, xForm nodes, math nodes, constraints, and deformers.
This is the workspace where you design the overall structure and behavior of your rig.
If you’re coming from Rigify, you can imagine this as the space where you’d define an entire limb, spine, or face system — but built from your own reusable components.
The Rigging Nodes Schema Editor works differently.
Schema nodes are Mantis’ equivalent of loops.
They are named after “schemas in a chain,” because they represent a repeated pattern that runs for a set number of iterations.
You can think of a schema as a piece of a chain: a repeating unit that gets multiplied across your rig as many times as you need.
For example:
A schema might represent one bone + one control pair.
By running that schema X times, Mantis automatically generates a complete chain of bones and controls (e.g., an FK arm chain, a tail rig, or a spine).