Add-ons to expand your toolbox

Everything discussed in this book has been part of the default Blender experience. While Blender manages to cover such impressive depths, add-ons can completely change how you approach rigging.

Admittedly, some of these add-ons may do you more harm than good (Auto-Rig add-ons come to mind), but there are a few that are genuinely great. A few personal favorites are as follows:

• Wiggle Bones: Assign a bone to be a wiggle bone, then animate any bones above it; this add-on gives set bones a nice touch of physics. It leans more toward animation but it’s a fantastic tool to know about, just in case someone asks for a rig with little stringy things that need to jiggle (or not so stringy).
• Bone Manager: Assigning bone groups can be a little unsightly. All of those dots in the Layers grid just look daft, right? Bone Manager adds a new UI where you can name bone groups and even add scene controls to switch selected bone groups on the fly. Animators...