I honestly can't think of a program where building a rig is easy. (depends on complexity) There are quite a few auto rigging tools out there, is there a reason you need to build a rig from scratch? Maya has Human IK and quick rig already built in.
There's a good example of how to do a shoulder rig with armor here: https://polycount.com/discussion/200175/rigging-a-spaulder-an-easy-way-a-simple-way-to-rig-shoulder-armor
oh and if you want ready rigs, here few links: https://instantrig.com/ https://shalabology.wordpress.com/free-stuffs/free-rigs/3dsmax/shiko-new-rig/ and Mixamo.com
Hey, Thanks for sharing this, the more rigs we have the better :) Maybe post it in the Community Rigs thread too - http://polycount.com/discussion/149037/community-rigs#latest
So I need to rig up a human heart, the animation is relatively basic, but I'm not sure about the best way to go about rigging it. I thought i might try something using clusters, but I figured I'd ask here to see if anyone's done it before. It's going in to UE4, if that makes a difference. Thanks!
This is a character I've been modelling in maya. I started with a box. Here is the same character after smoothing My goal is for him to look like this reference image, and also to rig him in maya and animate him. I'm new to modelling and rigging and animating, but I'm trying to optimize this model so that it is in the best…