Rigging: does it have to be such a pain in the dick? (I model and rig mostly fantasy creatures)
Rigging is a weirdly logical discipline that I find strangely enjoyable - it does take time. So the last couple of times I’ve skipped ahead and used Advanced Skeleton which has rigs for all kinds of things. The biped rig has the most stuff as far as I can tell, but I used the quadruped for the pony. The license is free for private and educational use. I mean, I can rig a good enough biped, but when it comes to advanced tools like IK/FK spine switches, bendy things, tails, twist compensation … I’m out. If you use AS you just have to place your joints and it hooks everything up for you.
So next there’s skinning? Well it has a few tools for that, but I didn’t use them. There’s quite a few tools out there, as previously mentioned I enjoy the component editor for some reason, but it’s not feasible at high poly.