dummy guide to a useful rig

since i had to work with some really crappy rigs lately i will post the bare essentials of a useful rig here

- have a working "select all" button !!
that actually selects ALL the keyable attributes !!!
and ONLY the keyable attributes !!
it should select every single keyable parameter to lock down a pose
if you delete every key in the graph editor after pressing that button you delete the animation and not break the rig with it.
if you move all the keys in the graph editor - fcurves editor it retimes your animation without breaking the poses.
also dont forget about hidden controllers (fk/ik for example)
.. that can also be done without a button if you dont have any hidden controllers. if you drag select the whole model and it only selects the controls (need to be curves/splines and rest has to be unselectable)
- ALL keyable nodes should be represented by a spline curve
so if you select all splines in the scene you only selected animateable objects
therefore you can switch your app to select only splines in animation
- splines should maybe somehow represent the different objects
hip/root spline should look different from the spine splines
left and right main foot control should look different from the rest of the bodies splines
all spine controls can look the same
all arm controls can look the same
colorcode left and right controls
- custom attributes should work the same in any position or orientation of the object.
dont use "off sets" or orients because they will work different depending on the position of the mastercontroller
- FINGERS
have a way to really pose every part of the finger
so you can really grab things in a proper way
not ONLY have a general straight/curl control on fingers or the whole hand

- upvector on ik bones like knee orientation
parent it to the foot
and not to the hip
so if you rotate the foot - the knee will look in the same direction
if you rotate the hip
the knee orientation does not change

- if you have ik and fk on hands
ik on hands should lock down the whole hand position in space
one ik from the shoulder to the wrist is not enough,
because the hand position will change when you move the rest fo the body
- gui picker/synoptic view/or however you call it
not really obligatory
helps though
have a select all button there
have a key all button there
have a translate character button there (hip,feet,ik arms - autoswitch to global translate)

- put all mouth shapes on one controller (jaw controller for example because it also does the mouth open / close)
all the eye lid / brow controlers to another controller
dont put them all on one controller or on 10 controllers
unless its a bone driven setup of course