I've been looking at some of the free/inexpensive offerings for 3d modeling and animation, but it seems to me like they all lack some feature or another. What I would basically want to do is to be able to create a 3d model with an armature and a texture map. Then I would want to make skeletal animations for various actions, like "walk", "jump", etc and save these into a file that I can import to my XNA game. From what I can gather, FBX, X and Collada all support these features and they should be usable in XNA. The problem is that I can't find a tool that will actually do all that and export successfully into one of those formats.

• I looked at Blender, but the animation support in the exporters seems to be really hokey and they either refuse to work or produce broken models.
• Wings 3D doesn't even have animation support.
• Anim8or doesn't export into any formats other than its own.
• Milkshape 3D doesn't support several animations in a single file (except if I combine them into one really long animation, but that's rather inflexible).
• XSI Mod Tool's DirectX exporter has broken texture support (haven't checked the animation support).
• Maya PLE won't actually export into any usable formats.
• Fragmotion seems to produce a broken animation, but it kinda looks promising since it supports the features I mentioned and the .X file it produced is actually valid, although the animation looks wrong.
  

Has anyone used these or any other free or inexpensive (Maya or 3D Studio are out of the question) tools for making animated models? Have you had any better experiences, or found workarounds for the problems I mentioned?

well, what your asking is really hard to find (if there even is something like that free out there) because what your asking is what the BIG 3d graphics software does (like 3D studio max) but there are some things you can work around. if your just creating a person and want animations ----> here is one that i like    http://charactershop.thegamecreators.com/ <----- it is very easy and cheap

but if you just search around on google for a while, there should be something to pop out.

Well it's not that far off. Blender does all of that. The problem is getting it into XNA. The exporters don't support all of those features, and there's currently no support for the Blender format in the content pipeline. I might try fixing the exporter script to work with several animations. Milkshape hits pretty close except that it doesn't actually separate the different animations. Fragmotion looks like it might actually do everything I want, so I'm going to give it a closer look. I hear the animation being wrong might be a DX Viewer bug.

If those are the features you actually want, I would suggest paying the money for 3ds Max. I like it a lot, even though I'm not a real artist.

If you don't have the money, then you'll have to make either Milkshape 3D or Blender work for you. This may mean that you have to write your own exporter. You can, for example, download the FBX SDK from Autodesk's web site, and use as a starting point to write your own FBX exporter from either Blender or Milkshape.

Yeah, that might be a bit of work you didn't want to do. That's why the programs that actually do these things cost real money :-)

Another option is to look into translation, using either Deep Exploration or Polytrans; they're about $395, so a lot cheaper than 3ds Max. If you can export to something not usable within XNA, you can then translate to FBX using one of those tools.

Pekuja,

This is the chain I've came up with.

1.  Model in milkshape ( about $30 US ) and save as .ms3d.

2.  Build textures and map UV coordinates in Lithunwrap ( Free if you find lithunrap or pay about $20 - $50 for upgraded Ultimate Unwrap ).  Export texture as .bmp and save model as .ms3d.

3.  Color texture in photoshop ( $$$$, really whatever image editing software you are comfortable with ) and export as .png )

3.  Assign the texture back in Milkshape.

4.  Open .ms3d model in Fragmotion ( about $30 US ).  Create bones.  Assign vertices to bones.  Create animations 1 - n.  Export as .X.

Now, I know the problem you are having with the animation being incorrect and have found the fix.  You have to import the model into your solution explorer and open it in VS Express.  It basically involves deleting the last '}' ( closed curly bracket ) before the first 'AnimationSet' and adding a '}' just before the 'Mesh'.

Here are some links about such adventures:

http://forums.xna.com/thread/3119.aspx

http://forums.xna.com/thread/3337.aspx

gameSpace seems quite cool. The light version is a free download which allows you to save up to 650 polygons, to .X file too from what I read.

http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/gsl/gsl.asp

Carrara 5 Pro has an .fbx export option, you can purchase a download version for $549: clicketty click click

And Maxon's Cinema 4D (underrated but great package) supports it too. 'FBX 6 is supported in CINEMA 4D Release 9.5 and greater.' - quote from the website. Have a look: clicketty click click

Of the two, I personally prefer C4D, but it can be a little pricey. One of it's great benefits is the workflow is the 'Mirai Style' workflow of Maya and XSI. Definitely worth a look.

As for me, I'm currently a Modo/Lightwave/Messiah Studio fiend :D.

I use Modo and Lightwave also.  Both are fantastic modelers and Lightwave has probably the best out of the box renderer... but you won't need that for making game stuff.

What Lightwave does have that's cool is lots of free plugins.  There is a very nice DirectX exporter that even exports animation... and it's free.  There are also plugs that can take high res geom and map information from it to low res models (that one isn't free but I hear that the new version of Lightwave has something built in that does the same thing).  If you are a student, you should be able to score Lightwave for around 300 bucks.

3d max is pretty much a standard in the game industry from what I hear though.  I'm sure it has some great tools for game assets.

I use the following tools:

Paint.NET or GIMP for textures. The former is incredibly easy to use, just a more powerful version of MSPaint, and GIMP is described as the freeware alternative to Photoshop. The communities online for these two programs are great places to find plugins and so on. They both export png and other, with transparency.

AC3D for models. It's a really nice tool, and the best thing about it is that it has an included texture coordinate editor. You can edit the texture position for every single vertex on its own. On top of that, it has really useful tools like subdivision, and an incredibly useful Reduce tool, which decreases the polygon count automatically in a model, good for making multiple LODs.

Character FX is a really useful animator. You load the 3ds or obj meshes exported from AC3D and then build and animate the skeleton. You can export this animated mesh as directX. Perfect. Unfortunately, it takes a little amount of messing about with the options, because the default export does not work with XNA (E_FAIL error). However, with some messing about, you can make it work. Furthermore, you can export the animation without the geometry, so this can be combined with multiple meshes. In my C++ third person shooter WIP, I made several character models, and just one animation set, and it works flawlessly with all of them.
The only fault with this program is that there is no function to snap the joints and bones to the grid, but if you are careful and meticulous like me you won't need to.

The two paint programs are free, as is the animator. Only AC3D costs 80 bucks - a really good deal, I thoroughly reccomend the investment.

The thing is, I don't only use XNA, I use other tools such as C++ and Irrlicht, or Ogre, or sometimes DirectX SDK when I'm feeling brave. Even sometimes I use Game Maker and Ultimate 3D (a rendering DLL for game maker). The thing is, these three programs are 100% compatible with all these suites, which makes me really happy.

All I need to ndo now is find a decent terrain editor, and I will have a complete 3d game making suite on my pc, commercial quality capable, all for <$100.
Perhaps I will make my own.

Thought I would toss in EarthSculptor.

I've been using it to create terrain for a 2D iso game I'm working on.

http://www.earthsculptor.com/

It's free but there is a paid for version with higher resolution terrain options.

It's worth checking out to see if it fits your pipeline.

Allan