Hello ! I just can’t decide by myself what would be best and I lack experience in animation. In demo reels of rigs I sometimes see a ton of little controller bones on the model, or long panels on the side with tons of properties. Sometimes both.
I don’t know what to choose for my character who has lots of controllers. My rigs are for myself so I never really took the time to organize them more professionally.
What is generally preferred, and why ? What are the pros and cons when animating ?
The little controller panels are for when animators are more comfortable editing a sidebar slider than they are editing a bone position. It all amounts to the same end-point-- it’s just interface.
If your rig is for yourself, then only you can answer this. Which way are you more comfortable animating? If you don’t know, then make a rig both ways and find out.
I think it depends on what the property does, specifically if, when, and how often you need to animate the property.
Properties that you typically won’t change mid-animation, like head-follow or IK/FK, I think make the most sense to be in the properties panel. Even if you do end up needing to change the setting or animating the property, having it localized makes sense as opposed to fetching for another bone, imo.
For other things like shapekey drivers, it makes more sense to use bone panels as it can be more intuitive to animate when you’re seeing bones in action over a UI rather than just a number in a panel.
That’s what I’ve found most useful in my experience.
