This was my first full body rig I had done. Used maya's python code to create an auto rigging script sped up iterations and changes.
The rig has controls for each part, with visibility toggles, fk ik switching and blending (except the tail). A mistake I made was to not script the placement of these controls, repeatedely remaking controls manually wasted time.
I mainly focused on the legs and feet controls.
The Legs are a three bone setup using 3 ik chains.
The feet have working foot roll, bank, aswell as
heel twist, toe twist, and toe tap, for easier and quicker posing.
To improve this further I would figure out a solution to have FK controls for the claws mixed in with the IK controls
Following advice from lecturers from frontier games the tail's fk controls has secondary fk controls to rotate two joints at once, halfing the number of clicks the animator needs to control the tail.
They also adviced to not bother with an IK for the tail, as unless the end of the tail is being used to grab or hold onto something, like a monkey would, there is not much benefit.
To improve this I could add fk ik matching so when switching between the two , the animator could choose to match the joints position first.
More dynamics to the tail and other parts, more controls around the face, blendshapes, or more options for locking parts of the rig would improve this.
Still pretty chuffed with this first rig, so here's another lil shimmy I animated in a bit less than an hour using this rig.