I'm about to get into skeletons and skins for the first time. I'm under the impression that you can create these outside of directX and import them in. My question is which program is best for this? I want to create professional characters. Thanks, -Devin

there is a lot of tools for that job, all depends on the money you got to play with..

Expensive ones:
3D Studio Max
Softimage XSI
Maya

Not that expensive ones:
Milkshape 3D


Free ones (actually i only know 1)
Blender


you sould also know that most of them export to .X using plugins from 3rd parties


EDIT:
Here is a better list

I'm thinking maya at the moment. Would that be your choice?

Maya is professional production quality good. It's been bought by the folks who make 3d Studio Max.

Its interface is fully customizable via scripts, but I haven't worked with either first hand so I can't say too much more.

nop, if i had the money i choose 3D Studio Max, the user base i think is larger and easier to get tutorials, also the Character Studios is really good to animate models

Edit: but maya is really good too

Quote:

Original post by devronious Would that be your choice?

I personally don't have the money for the (super) expensive ones. Blender's interface drove me nuts, but it looked like it would do the job if you could work out how [lol]

I'm going to push this over to 'Visual Arts' - they're much more likely to be able to give you an informed opinion (etc..) on which modelling package to invest your money into.

hth
Jack

I am playing with the Maya 7 PLE (free Personal Learning Edition) now, and got the Maya 7 Beginner's bundle to learn it. It is really cool, but the PLE does not let you save or export to any format other than their secret one, since they don't want anyone to use it commercially. You can also download the full commercial one and try it out for free for 30 days. The same goes for Max 8.

The problem with them is their .x File support. You need a 3rd party exporter to create .x files, and none are prefect. But you can at least try it out.

I plan to get Maya 7 at some point, because I am writing my own modeler now and want to add support for the FBX format. That way, people can save files to the FBX format from Maya and convert to .x in my program. I am a way off from having anything presentable to the public though (if ever).

Yea I came up with a modeller idea myself and was thinking about creating my own modeller. Maybe I will just do that.

Thanks guys!

-Devin