Unity Technologies, please add the ability to change the orientation axis in the Character Controller component as can be done in the Capsule Collider component. Now the axis of the Character Controller component coincides with the scene Y axis and I cannot use this component correctly if my character is an animal.
Typically you’d want your character controller to be an upright capsule regardless of the actual character anatomy - otherwise things like stairs and slopes wouldn’t work correctly, how would a “horizontal” capsule go up a slope for instance? How much should it rotate to face the slope?
If you want entirely custom shape for a character controller, you can write your own based on a kinematic rigidbody. There’s also ready made solutions for this in the asset store, if you don’t want to roll your own.