Lastly I would recommend that whatever you choose, you make sure to either use the same team for your modeling/texturing/animation needs or make sure that they are working very closely together. I have done work with people on this forum who were paid as modelers because they were supposedly better than me, but when I had to animate their models they were not even closely set-up for animation. I had gross deformations on the arms and legs, the faces werent set up for eye blinking or mouth opening and other issues which meant that I had to fix the model and add vertices to make it work which I ended up charging the client for. So be smart with your choices. Or just do it yourself like I do. wink eventually you will get good at it.
I know the feeling, although not a lot of people expect talking or blinking animations in there games, and I'm thinking that, that may have been the reason they didnt put the facial animation stuff in there.
The general knowledge is that if you are going to outsource for modeling, the modeler needs to have at least some knowledge animating. A good organic modeler should be able to make a humanoid that can just have a rig set to bone heat and still watch the mesh deform decent. Then the animator can tweak weights to make it beautiful.
