What is, according to your experience, the best tool to create 3D models for chatterbot / virtual agents?

Requirements:

- Virtual Characters oriented only (head and/or full body). No generic 3D modellers, where you have to start from scratch (primitives).
- Exporting the 3D model in formats that are supported by Flash 3D Engines like Away3D, and in general by 3D engines for Desktop and mobile platforms.
- Exporting embedded animations.

In other words, a chatterbot / virtual agents oriented 3D models factory for fast development.

Make human is flexible for creating models, I have never tried the Flash 3D engines though.
http://www.makehuman.org/

Be careful with Flash, I believe Adobe is limiting mobile support. HTML 5 may end up being a better long term choice.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/11/why-mobile-flash-died-an-adobe-employee-speaks-out/

You will probably need a tool chain to go from model to end-user avatar.

Daz3d can work if you are looking to just do animation movies. It has some restrictions in the use of the 3D models.

It’s a bit dependent we’re you’d like to start.

The home page lists a few in the right hand column:
http://www.chatbots.org/#avatar

But if you’d like to build characters from scratch, you might want to consider to use a (semi) professional animation tool. We’re currently populating a list of tools for one of our next releases. I have gone through it by scanning their names, and these seem to be in this direction:

-Autodesk Maya
-Harmony
-3DS Max
-FaceWare
-zBrush
-Anime Studio
-Poser 3D
-Crazy Talk Animator
-iClone

We’ll need to go through our tooling list, categorized, test, describe them, but this might be a start for you.

You can also contact the animation companies listed under:
http://www.chatbots.org/companies/animation

(also there, we’ll need to do much more categorization), we’ve just made a start with animation.

Good list Erwin.  You missed Blender but that’s probably too low level..

There is also : FaceGen @ http://www.facegen.com/

yeah, you’re right, blender is there as well. We should actually set up a test lab or so. @roger: shall we set up Skype conversation to eloborate on this? We might do something together..