Control rig for IK biped / humans supplied with iClone 8 is great,

this suggestion is about usecases where one wants to animate non-standard characters in iClone, examples
• Four-legged (or more) animals
• fantasy creatures with reverse legs below waist, like a Fauns
• Characters with multiple arms
• etc.!

What's there now:
On extended bones, FK only, and/or select bones to form IK, then move bone chain in an IK manner.

Problem:
Only using the FK and select bone-chain IK is too tedious and unreliable for meaningful animation of extended bones.
For instance, one cannot lock the rotation or position of a leaf bone, which one moves in an IK manner, or control the rotations of intermediary bones of the chain.

Proposed solution:
Some built in facility to extend the control rigs, or create one's own control rigs

This could be something like:
• Constraints/"rules", pole targets and drivers available for use with the existing IK and FK system
• iClone proprietary rig controller object that can perhaps be attached to Avatar objects, like with the reach target system
• Node system to set up relationships between bones
• Python script API for controlling bones

UX wise suggestions
• integrated as an own tab on the modify motion panel. e.g., | IK | FK | Custom Controls |
• Can be set up entirely within CC4 first prior to going into iClone
• Separate area in the Curve Editor

I will make no assumption about the market for this solution. But I daresay, it would open up a wider range of animation usecases which does not revolve around the frame of human only characters.

iClone has an advantage in speed, ease of use and quick turnover for animation, but one likely must pursue using other software the moment one want to make a lengthier animation of something that's not biped/human, which is unfortunate.

Thanks to Reallusion team for any consideration. Best,