I've been running around this forum looking at what programs you guys use for game programming, but it looks like people are either looking down on lightwave and maya, or it's just that no one has really gotten it to work well unless it's been with obj or 3ds file formats. i'm wondring what people suggest as an alternative. i'm looking in to writing a 3d skiing game, that's why i ask. i've already taken an opengl class and did a final project on modeling human motion in skiing http://www.emba.uvm.edu/~anewhard/cs274final (code is here...compiles on sun, just change #include <GL/glut.h> to <GLUT/glut.h>). that took me about 2 days or so...whatever so anyways anyone have any suggestions?

i've also noticed people saying doing the animations and load them into opengl instead of straight programming them. any location on tutorials on how to do this?
thanks in advance

OpenGL only helps with rendering, you'll have to do your own animation loading/interpolation etc.

The Black Shades source has some interesting animation stuff

David, having looked at it, how do you keep your code straight?! Looking through all the global and public variables makes this Cpp programmer's head hurt.