Systems and methods for creating and using modeless animation manipulation rigs

Systems and methods for custom designing modeless rigs or sets of object control elements that can be used when manipulating one or more objects. Users define object control rigs that can be used to perform specific object manipulation tasks for the user when manipulating objects in a scene. Different rigs can be constructed for the same set of animation objects to perform different tasks. A rig is modeless in that a rig may include an arbitrary user-selected mixture of object control elements that are typically used in different modes of manipulation. When a user selects a rig, all of the visual representations of the object control elements specified for that rig are enabled to be displayed proximal the object(s) with which the control elements are associated. No additional selection of object parts is necessarily required to determine which control elements are associated with the object(s). The user may manipulate the object(s) using a displayed visual representation of an object control element.