Hi, I'm working on my first game. I'm a very experienced C++ programmer but not in game-dev. For the last couple of years I've been developing an engine of sorts. It's a procedural smooth voxel engine that allows transition from space to surface for quite large planets. For instance my current test planet is about 800km in diameter. I'm getting to the point where I want to have a few characters to run around on it, but I really know nothing about animation. The program is written in C++ using DirectX 11. I'll be taking care of the physics myself, since it has to generate streaming polygons at run time because of the procedural generation, so in any case I don't need physics. For right now I'm just doing pill to mesh collision anyway.
At this point I'm just trying to figure out what I need. I guess I'd need something like character creator and iClone, but I'm wondering what I need to add into the game engine itself. I'm assuming I'll need some C++ code to run and blend animations. Is there a library I can get for that or should I start writing it myself? I've seen a few tutorials so I guess I could do it if I have to.
Also what kind of characters can I make with this stuff. I assume humans are pretty easy. But for instance would I be able to make something semi humanoid like a Gnoll or Orc? What about animals? Also are there stock animations like running, walking and jumping? At least to begin with I'm trying to get away with not learning full modeling and animation. Is it even reasonable for me to do this stuff myself or should I find someone else, given I'm not so artistically inclined? Thanks in advance.