I started out with the ASSIMP library and was pretty fond of it! But unfortunately, many models I exported from maya/3dsmax came out scrambled, skewed, and otherwise distorted. Autodesk maintains the FBX SDK and this ensures compatibility with maya/3dsmax, and FBX seems to be a pretty standard file format, so I thought it might be better choice and less hassle than ASSIMP.

However! I have to say I find the FBX SDK documentation pretty poor. Its very brief, vague, and mostly tries to teach through example code, but leaves way too many questions open (at least to a beginner). I looked around and there seem to be no textbooks available, or more detailed, comprehensive tutorials. The autodesk fbx sdk discussion boards are a bit of a ghost town and the answers I've gotten are not very helpful.

I'm pretty frustrated because I really want to learn this well, but I can't seem to find the right resources or get my questions answered. Does anyone have any advice? Would it be worth asking my FBX related questions on these boards perhaps?

well i kinda had the same problem but you can try to work around by looking at a simple MD5 example here and understand quarternion if that such a big deal for you
you can look here http://tfc.duke.free...5-specs-en.html
its based on quarternion .. well.. instead of dual quaternion(wich is stated in "ViewScene" fbx sdk example).. or bones matrices from assimp.. wich i never understood whats a damn matrix.. lol