I am looking for advice on methods, code and model formats suitable to do body animations with skinning.

I know how skinning works, and I could implement it from scratch (I have even authored a student lab on skinning), but time is limited so I would like to avoid detours on not-so-good formats, and if there is good (modern) code around then it would be wise not to miss it. I fear that what I know is aging and I want to be updated.

Let's say, what is the current state on the subject? How do you work on body animation?