Rig UIs & Pickers"Bone Manager" is a free Blender addon for creating intuitive Rig UIs for your characters without writing a line of code. The UI generated with it can include a Collection visibility menu for hiding and unhiding parts of the rig, as well as a Properties UI for organizing various functions of the rig.
A brief history of Bone Manager
This is a tried and true tool that has existed since before Blender 2.8. Originally, it was called "Bone Layer Manager" and its primary aim was to allow a more intuitive use of Blender's bone layers system. Back when Blender's bone layers looked like 32 little boxes, this addon allowed us to give those layers names.
Of course, Blender 4.0 revamped the Bone Collection system and now naming Bone Collections is a default feature. However, the feature set of Bone Manager had evolved in the meantime and now included the ability to design Rig UIs. This is now the main use of this addon.
Bone Manager UI Design tools
The addon allows you to quickly turn your Bone Collections into a Rig Menu available in the N-Panel. You can either give each Collection a number to make it appear on a specific row of the Menu or use tools directly in the Menu design space to move the Collections around. A hands-on demonstration of the process is available in the video below.
Bone Manager Properties Menu
Another great feature of Bone Manager is the ability to create a Properties menu. This is very useful in complex rigs which contain various custom properties. Instead of hunting for them on the various bones they belong to, you can place them all in one place and have easy access to them at anytime. This can make the animation process more enjoyable and streamlined.
Exporting your UI
Once you have designed your Menu, you can download it as a .py file which you can run as a script from inside Blender’s text editor. With that, the addon is no longer necessary to display the menu. That means that you could share your file with other people and they will have access to the same Rig UI even if they don’t have Bone Manager installed.
Overall Bone Manager is one of the best addons in the Rig UI category AND it’s completely free (although please do support the developer with a donation on Gumroad if you can). It’s difficult not to recommend it 🙂