This Rig was made in Maya 2014. So it might be incompatible with older versions of the software.

I made it a long time ago, and I already forgot how a lot of this stuff works, so please bear with me.


________________________Plugins________________________


I used a few external plugins to make this rig, but everything 
should work just fine without any of them installed. 


Shapes - http://www.braverabbit.com/shapes/
This is a great plugin that manages and helps you create corrective 
blend shapes for you model. I recommend getting this one if you want 
to edit or export the blend shapes.


quadrupedRigger - http://www.braverabbit.com/quadrupedrigger/
A plugin for rigging quadruped animals, works best with basic characters. 
It gave me a lot of problems with joint deformation, so I never used it 
again. If you're looking for a good maya auto-rigger plugin, checkout Rapid Rig: 
https://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/-rapid-rig-modular-procedural-auto-rig-for-maya


AnimSchool Picker - https://www.animschool.com/pickerInfo.aspx
This is a selection GUI for maya, it helps you organize and select the character controls.
It makes the animation process a lot easier.



________________________Tips________________________


Geometry
This model is actually low poly, I made it like this to work with Maya's mesh smoothing. 
You can select any object and hit 1 or 3 on the keyboard to switch between the two.


Controls
You can show or hide all the different controls by selecting the main_ctrl.
I prefer to leave everything hidden and just use the Picker.


Expressions
They fix some issues with the body and drive most of the controls on the face.
I was still learning the basics of maya when I wrote these expressions, so a bunch of stuff could have 
been optimized. If you're planning on exporting this to another software, you're probably 
better off rewriting everything from scratch.


Hair
You have the option to animate the hair manually or switch to a dynamic simulation with nHair. 
There's a separate hair system for the mane, the tail and the eyelashes. nucleus is disabled by default.
You can find everything inside the HairSystem group in the outliner.
Switch between manual and dynamic by selecting these controls:
FS_cc_FrontMane_A_01
FS_cc_SideMane_A_01
FS_cc_Tail_A_01
nDynamics can get pretty buggy, so I wouldn't recommend using it unless you know what you're doing.

If you want to learn more about this hair rig, watch this tutorial: https://vimeo.com/8240821


Rendering
Everything is set to the default settings. 
But if you're interested in the method I use, it's just Mental Ray and Image Based Lighting 
with this background http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/File:AiP_Ponyvillehouses.png as an environment map.



________________________Bugs and Issues________________________


Limited leg movement
So after I used the quadrupedRigger plugin to create the skeleton, I learned that the rotation 
of the joints was very limited, if they rotate too much they end up flipping. I tried fixing it 
with expressions and corrective blend shapes, but it's still kinda of broken. 
So be careful with the movement of the legs.


Joints Flipping/Not Moving Properly
just move the main_ctrl and undo to bring the leg back to normal. 


Wings
The wings are fully rigged, but they don't fold up properly, you can select the 
FS_cc_Wing_A control to toggle between open and closed.


There are probably more issues...
But I'm really struggling to remember, sorry guys :( 
Hopefully someone out there will learn from my mistakes and build a better rig ;)


If you animate something cool send me a link, I'd love to see it!
https://twitter.com/2Snacks

