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.
HumanIK does not suffice? Shouldn't have any weird behavior with basic animations and humanIK. It is easy to do weird stuff though when new to it. I am *somewhat* decent at it now, after having rigged like 30+ characters.... Gonna be extra stressful to learn if you on a strict deadline. I used the only two rigging tuts on…
I've been in the process for making a game character to prototype a game with for a few weeks. This is by far the most frustrating step in any part of making a game it seems. Everything is so unstable. I use an expression to drive forearm rotation, I have to remove it because it causes twitching and insane rotations. I…
There are loads more free rigs available for Maya then any other 3d app methinks. I did it once. I would download a couple and take them for a test run before skinning. Just animate the skeleton and see if it does what you want before you commit.
That frustration is common early on. Espcially when you're learning and experimenting. Once you settle on a series of methods you will find it's a lot more stable. Sometimes when you remove something, parent/unparent, put it in a group or take it out, it's transforms get all screwed up and you might not notice it because…
If I recall what happened with what I was doing with my Hammerhead character, I've had to cobble information from three to four separate tutorials on Maya rigging to finally end up with something that was solid and stable. It's hard because of, as you have said, the relationships of these different processes and the layers…