Hey @Anonymous
So there is 2 ways to go about this, the first way is the way I would do it, the easiest and cleanest way... 2nd is just in case you don't want to make a group node for whatever reason that might be which is extremely rare.
1st way starts with you having a group node above the controller and rotate the group node however many degrees you desire and when you select the controller it is all zeroed out (0,0,0) like you want, but with the orientation of its group. This is the most used way and the one I always have done!
2nd way is a bit more tricky, just in case you don't want a group node at all. You can use joints! By using this you'll be able to actually freeze the rotate values and maintain that orientation of the local axis, just how joints work. You can then parent new shapeNodes like the nurbs curves to the joints on the bottom left as a MEL script by typing (parent -r -s) and then simply hide the joint display in the attribute editor. I told you its the complicated way! haha
Hope that helps out!
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Daniel López de Medrano
Remote Character Rigger
*14+ hour Rigging Course*
