Are there any engines that can load 3d models easily, or that can animate them easily?
umm… bump?
JME can
Check out the website there also really helpful on the forums.
Yeah, jME is definitely the best (potentially the only) option that I can think of. OBJ loaders are also aplenty on Google, and are pretty easy to write. You can’t do animations with OBJ, but you can always just load multiple models in to simulate an animation. Collada (.DAE) models are just XML so are also easy to write loaders for, and they support animations.
Do a Google search for the specs of either, it will also teach you a whole lot if you end up writing your own loader.
3DzzD can load 3DS including camera/mesh/light/hierarchie/pivot/mapping channel/smooth groups/texture/keyframe and play animation (probably the best OS 3ds loader 8) )