I think you will be surprised how unreliable .X is when you start using more advanced features. For simple single texture geometry it's ok. But as soon as you start doing anything more complicated Very few loaders and exporters produce the exact same result in different applications.
Most 3rd part tools support formats like 3ds and dxf, unfortunately these are ancient and hardly support any useful features that will enable artists to create better quality graphics.
I've used torque that has an integrated editor and thats simple enough to use. You can just create points and paths for character AI in that.
You can do the same thing in other tools. In B3d with the b3d pipeline exporter for 3dsmax I can draw splines in a scene and use those as a AI spline paths that attract the players.
At my old place of work, we had a more dynamic AI system without sny nodes at all, but rather used a low poly floormap and a kind of reverse LOD, where the AI uses the vertices of the mesh to plot its course and can tesselate the floormap refining it when needed in order to navigate around other plaers. This allows NPC's a lot of variables. Like you could paint behaviors in the floormaps with vertex colours that NPC's react to.
This was all created in 3dsmax by the same guys modeling the levels, and was really easy to do.
Most 3rd part tools support formats like 3ds and dxf, unfortunately these are ancient and hardly support any useful features that will enable artists to create better quality graphics.
I've used torque that has an integrated editor and thats simple enough to use. You can just create points and paths for character AI in that.
You can do the same thing in other tools. In B3d with the b3d pipeline exporter for 3dsmax I can draw splines in a scene and use those as a AI spline paths that attract the players.
At my old place of work, we had a more dynamic AI system without sny nodes at all, but rather used a low poly floormap and a kind of reverse LOD, where the AI uses the vertices of the mesh to plot its course and can tesselate the floormap refining it when needed in order to navigate around other plaers. This allows NPC's a lot of variables. Like you could paint behaviors in the floormaps with vertex colours that NPC's react to.
This was all created in 3dsmax by the same guys modeling the levels, and was really easy to do.