Rigging for the Animators: Nice Features to Have?

TarsaE

What are some rig features or controls that you find useful, or make your work easier? Especially uncommon ones you wish more rigs had. Conversely, what are some rig features/controls/setups that drive you nuts and make your life difficult?

For example, I find it's nice to have the rotation order as a attribute in the channel box, rather than having to go through the attribute editor, at least for the main controls (feet, hips, chest, head, etc.).

I've also seen rigs with double/layered controls for the body, hips, and chest. Each had two controls, one nested inside the other, as another safeguard against gimbal lock. 90% of the time you only needed the main one, but once in a great while the second one came in handy.

I'm getting more and more into rigging, and I'd like to know how I can make things easier for the animators.

If this topic belongs elsewhere, let me know and I'll move it.

tholmes3d

This isn't a very deep breakdown, but here's some personal preferences to get things going:

• I'm not a fan of set driven keys for groups of controls (often seen on fingers). They never turn out to be as useful as I want, so I just end up animating the controls. (Unless it's something super specific like breathing where I'd have to move multiple controls at once in the exact right way to get an effect, and even then, if you have a set drive key approach, also give me the option to just use the controls)
• Animating from a channel box is super annoying. I'll always choose to use an actual control (also often seen on fingers)
• Visibility controls to hide unnecessary bits like fingers are great
• Good rotation orders is huge
• Parent space options are great
• I love the option to have the upper arm be in clav or spine space. Basically, the option to have the arm rotate along with the clav or not when the clav is rotated

brucemoose

Multiple space groups for the spine torso/head. So I don't have to counter animate anything.

Ik stretchy legs or some form of knee correction control so I'm not fighting Ithe IK.

Bend bow controls for arms legs, you can get so much more appeal with a simple curves out of a pose with a simple bend bow.

If the rig comes with a prop there should be a space group for that prop on either hand control.

Make the rig fast af - personally I like having a proxy option. And there's nothing worse than a slow rig.