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flavoracid: IK isn't so bad on arms, even when not locking the hands for a specific action. i use IK for alot of my animations, and it works great. However, I agree with the rest of the issues in this rig.
Another thing to look up would be FK/IK blending, allowing the best of both world. I like doing IK for blocking and breakdowns, and if the rig has a nice FK/IK blend, I'll use FK for the tweaking. It's a nice feature for a rig like this. Also, since he is a martial artist, look into auto shoulder, being sure to add a control for adding in additional movements and isolated movements in the shoulder. Makes the animators life alot easier, as pulling off a good martial arts display is hard enough.
I love the model and textures, but the rig does need some work. I'm hoping you'll update the rig soon, so I can use it effectively.
I've spent years in school learning about Animation. Let me say I can't model for crap. I can't. But after working with hundreds of rigs, this one is really terrible. Your model is beautiful, and so is your texture work. I was excited to work with this but... fail.
Look.. your rig, the way it is now, is great for posing this character. I can pose him no problem. But quite frankly, no animator in their right mind uses IK on arms. Unless you need a very specific animation, like riding a motor cycle, or a horse, or serving food on a platter, everyone animates in FK. When I switch the rig to FK the controls are lost. Not only does it not move to FK but the IK seems to override s-... it's a mess.
Next, spine controllers should be either Rotate/Translate, or just rotate. I've never seen a 'sway' attribute. But rings around the torso, not just cluster deformers controlled by 3 spine controls. I think you're seriously underestimating the power of using Nurb Circles, and orient/point/parent (whatever) constraining them to the bones. I don't see any clav controllers, and that's key when shoulders hit their max rotational values, and u need to deform the chest/back for further reach.
Look... there are hundreds of shitty models/rigs on this website, but the reason why I am coming down so hard on you is because this is a great model, and I really wanted it to be a great rig.
Get the art of rigging volume 1. I guarantee if you read the first chapter of that book your rigging skills will improve 10 fold.
First off, I am very happy with this rig. It's very cool. However...
There seems to be an issue when you rotate the upperBody_Ctrol and then attempt to translate it... the upper body scales/implodes into the lower body.
Also, the orient constraints on the wrist controls override the FK controls. This Makes the hands stay at the same WS orientation when rotating the upper arm parts in FK mode which makes it to continuously tweak the wrist FK control orientation.
And lastly, there appears to be a ton of history on the geometry.
