Im most definately not a modeller or an artist. Give me a pencil and a pad and im like michelangello but give me a mouse and a 3d package and im as much use as boobs on fish. im coding a 3d engine for a tps and im at the stage where i want to start using a character with more animations then just the skinning sample dude.fbx walk animation. Ive seen loads of software that makes character design and animation a lot simpler, i.e quidam. but im loathed to spend that sort of cash on something like that. i have a mate who is a 3d modeller who is working on models and stuff, but he will take ages and i need something to work with in the mean time. All i want is a skinned model, that has, walk, sprint, idle and jump animations.
Does anyone have either a model i could use, or ideas on how to create one without pulling my hair out?

Though luck pal. What you are asking for is what everyone wants i.e. a fully animated model :) There is lot of free stuff out there but nothing usable, you might find models but they will not have animations stored or with missing textures.

I think the best you can do is take dude.fbx as the base and add your own animation for other actions.  If you dont want to spend the money on the 3D package then I suggest you to try some free 3D modelling & animation softwares.

1. Blender
2. GMax

Your best bet in this case is to program your game without an animated figure (use a stand in) and then once you have a working demo of your game, recruit an artist to your team. For most games, animations are only eye candy, and they whole game can function with just a stand in cube, or static character.

Then once your game is functional, it will be more attractive to possible artists.

Thanks for the tips guys,

I have spent a bit of money to save a bit of hassle. I now use Quidam 3 to create character models, which works fine as you can export the models into .dae files which you can then plonk into animeeple where you can then add motion capture to the skeleton. the only issue im having now is that the texture files that are exported from quidam are .tif files. and im not sure how to change them so that xna can handle them. someone suggested converting them in a paint app, but im not 100% sure that the model will acept the changed texture format or if i will have to figure out a way of putting them into a 3d modelling package and export with different texture formats

Hi there,
I'm not sure at all, but, put your model file inside the Content folder in XNA. Then, double click on it. It opens it in text form. Then, press Ctr+F Inside the dialogue box, write theNameOfYourTexture.tif and each time you see that, you replace it by theNameOfYourTexture.png Once it's done, convert your .tif textures into .png textures and add them to the folder where you put your model. It should now seek theNameOfYourTexture.png
Again, I'm not sure it'll work.
Cheers

I just tried that with a project of mine. I had a .fbx file that needed some .png textures. To verify what I said before, I converted those .png textures into .tga textures (another format supported by XNA), I executed => error, cannot find the .png textures. I did what I told you before, and it works fine. The only bad side is that it makes some time to find and replace the texture name every time you see it inside the model file.
I hope it helps you ;)

Excellent, thanks antoine, i hadnt thought of editing the model hax style to change the texture names. its a long way round a problem but if youve tried and tested it, then its worth the effort.

You're using Quidam? That can be very expensive to actually use your characters.

You can purchase game characters that are rigged, textured, and come with standard animations. For the cheap crap, you can get away with the $49-to-$99-for-a-dozen cost of image-metricks on Turbosquid. For slightly higher quality, you can check out the fantasy characters at 3dbud.com (no soldiers, though). For the higher resolution stuff, it will cost more, even on Turbosquid (like about 300 per character).

However, if you don't want to put in the time to learn and do it yourself, then spending a few weeks' worth of lunch money on some purchased art might make total sense. Assuming you have the requisite programs to export it into the format of your choice, of course...

yea i know what you mean, i have used turbosquid before, i just bought quidam to speed up the process of knocking up quick character models, that already have skeletons with the correctly named bones, that i can snap into animeeple and add motion captures to. my problem mainly is that my 3d modelling strengths all lie in Truespace, but even using that im still no artist, and animations are a pain. Ive never really been hugely interested in the modelling process, im much more at home staring at lines of code and coming up with new ways of doing things. XNA is still relatively new to me, so i need to concentrate on learning the language rather then splitting my focus to other areas.