Character body rig
The body rigs for the female and male were identical so animation could be shared when needed. In many cases they needed to be slightly different to show a more feminine or masculine appearance. The rig incorporated the basic IK-FK spine, IK-FK arm/leg switching with matching and numerous other controls to make the animators lives easier.
There were IK and FK control sections around the character limbs, with both NURBS surfaces and curves. This was so the NURBS surface shaders could be left transparent, but still selectable, so the blocky shapes would not interfere with the animators so they could easily animate the rig. There was also a slider to control the NURBS surfaces so they could be shown from 100% opaque to 100% transparent depending on the animators preference.
The 'zooTools' right click menus were used extensively to make IK/FK switching easy and convenient.
For the arms, the menus would switch between IK/FK with keying options, toggle pole vectors visibility, control pole vectors vs. IK twist, set the pole vector and IK arm parents between several options. Individual finger controls could also be toggled if the finger sliders did not meet the animator needs.
There were 2 controls for each arm and leg. The IK/FK controls whose visibility would change based on which was currently being used, and a constantly visible ring to toggle between the two controls.
The leg controls were similar to the arms, but the IK component had numerous sliders to control which part of the foot was in contact with the ground plane. IK twist, and pole vector parents were also accessable through this menu.