Damon Lavenski offers a quick tip for using a geometry controller for a rig switch in Maya.

One of the great things about rigging in Maya is the fact that you can use a lot of different methods to create controllers. Likely the most popular is using curves for controllers because they don’t render, and are easy to work into a rig, while also having some sort of selection priority. You are not limited to curves however, controllers can literally be anything. Check out this short pick tip tutorial from Damon Lavenski who shows how to make a geometry controller for an IK/FK switch.

One of the drawbacks of using geometry controllers is that they will in fact render, that is until you set them not to render. Lavenski walks through how to exclude the soon-to-be controllers from rendering when the scene renders. The tutorial also covers changing the viewport shading so that it looks lees like geometry and more like a controller.