creature tools i found to be one of the few good rig systems for maya,too. but personally i like zooCST more, you can easily apply it to your own non-bipedal skeletons and it has some nice body part locking features. it's far more flexible for setting up your own rig's as well. from what i gathered, fbik is in maya to aid…
Maya 7 has full body IK which they yanked from Motion Builder, so it now effectively has a biped. If you're familiar with Motion Builder you should be happy, as it blows away a CS biped in terms of functionality. I do love character studio. And it's definitely getting better with age.
what kind of control and finetuning are you referring to? no, you can't create a six-legged biped with two heads and four arms from biped parts alone. but of course you can add other objects to the hierarchy as you wish. in my book: - animation control is pretty good: no stupid ik/fk switches: just grab a bone, rotate or…