Hi, first of all, sorry if this is OT, but this forum seemed appropriateish. Anyway: I am just wondering if anyone can recommend a good free/verycheap 3d modeling program that can be easily integrated with your own software? The artists I''m working with are currently familiure with 3ds Max and SoftImage XSI, so the obvious choices were gmax and XSI|EXP, but neither of these programs will allow you build exporter plugins, or allow you to read the internal format. And paying for the liscence is a bit too much. Softimage has a free FTK but I dont think it will load XSI|EXP files. So, has anyone here have any suggestions as to a good modeling package that is easy to extend to provide custom functinoality (eg: shaders etc) and supports exporting files and provides an sdk for reading the files?

I believe that ac3D is what your looking for. It supports many file formats and you can get a free 14 day trial of it at,
http://www.ac3d.org/pages/downloads

I''ve never actually used these so Im not sure how good they are but the screen shots look pretty good

Blender
Blender Source

Anim8r
Using Anim8r models in C programs and the Anim8r file format

[Moved to: Visual Arts]

Hi thanks for the suggestions, I had been looking into blender, and I think that is the best choice out there so far.

I forgot to mention that we actually need a complete 3d package, not just a modeler.

Does anyone happen to know the licensing fees for the full SDK''s for gmax and softimage XSI|EXP?

To get access to the full gmax SDK you need to get the Premium Sparks membership (which is $1200 a year).