These are links to external resources that are useful to know about, but which I can’t make an archive of for various reasons (paid courses, etc.)
Arcs and Curves are a fundamental principle of design and animation. It turns out that the math behind how curves are interpolated is extremely useful for all sorts of rigging tasks. This course by Harry Houghton is an in depth overview and guide for these usecases. Link to Course ...
This is a fantastic resource. Think of this as a forum to ask any question about rigging. There’s some incredible longtime industry riggers who are active in this server. Don’t be afraid to ask your questions, they’re super nice too! Link to Discord Server
This is great resource from Kyle Burris for getting a start with the openMaya API. It’s great because it isn’t trying to duplicate API documentation, but rather shows basic examples of the tools you’ll use often when using the openMaya API for rigging. Link to Purchase Handbook
Rig performance is vital, and so is understanding what will mess it up! This is the whitepaper originally released with the Maya 2016 evaluation engine re-write, and has been consistently updated since then. In particular the GPU Override and Manipulation sections are really helpful. Keeping deformation stacks on the GPU and tagging your controls so that Maya builds the proper evaluation graph from the get go are really important! Link to “Using Parallel Maya” Document