I created these little tools for use at my studio. They may be small and simple, but they greatly speed up many of the tedious aspects to creating character rigs quickly.

With a wide range of different characters, you can't always rely on an auto-rigger for everything (although we have those too) and these little tools help fill in the gaps left behind by our bigger proprietary beasties.

Download the toolset: jenTools_v1.0.zip

The Lock / Unlock Set

To lock and unlock nodes in order to prevent their deletion. Very useful for riggers who are handing off files and just know someone will hit delete at the wrong time!

The Rename Set

Some basic renaming functions that are quick and accessible, with the option to rename only same-type objects in a hierarchy.

The Pivot Snapping Set

Snapping / alignment controls that will adhere to an object's pivot point rather
than any external feature. Very useful for making control objects while rigging.

Curve Merge

Collects shape nodes of all the selected nurbs curves under a single transform.

Useful in rigging for applying different effects to different parts of a control object while keeping it functionally a single object.

Null Group

Creates a null group above each of the selected objects which will maintain their orientations while zeroing their values.

Extremely useful in rigging when creating FK control objects

Roll Joint Alignment

Will create a perfectly aligned roll joint from the given bone(s).

Piston Creator

Will create the bones and rigging for a piston. Quickly create tons of pistons on your complicated robotic characters!

Massive Attribute Connector

Will connect the given source and target attributes of all selected nodes, with the final selection being the driver.

Works via text input so that hidden attributes and non-data types are still accessible.

Mirror Set Driven Keys

Finds any driven keys inputting into the selected nodes and attempts to mirror their functionality via name, such as "left" to "right"

Very useful when a large number of driven keys need to be duplicated quickly, as in fingers and toes of rigs.

The Grabby Set

Creates a selection trigger so that one object may be used as a helper to
select many others.

Renaming proof, and easy to strip from a scene if its no longer needed.