TSM Guy and more.

The other day I found a great blog with heaps of free Maya Rigs on it. Its called Animation Buffet and while many of the rigs are the same as those on Highend 3D its great because you can search for rigs by categories (male, female, cartoon, realistic, creature etc).

While there I found one rig that I like in particular called TSM Guy, he strikes an excellent balance between stability, ease of use and flexibility. He is very easy to use, has fully scalable body parts, IK to FK and even bendable limbs so you can really push that Line of Action through the pose.

There are some great video tutorials on using him provided by his creators too, check em out: Stretchy Bits...Spine Controls ...Smart IK to FK...Arc Control...Proxy Parenting (this is cool)...Anti Twist Control

This is an excellent rig for creating the broad physical animation you would typically produce for a games show reel. The scalable nature of the rig means you can make him fat, thin, muscly, short or tall, you just scale up or down the body controls and there are input values for arm and leg width and length in the channel editor when you have the hand or foot controller selected. Its is a shame he doesn't have a face for dialogue, but we could rig up something simple I think. Enjoy.