I would probably take a long look at the
Irrlicht[
^] engine.
Converting this example to MFC
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/docu/example014.html[
^] should be pretty easy.
Depending on what you are doing the
OGRE[
^] engine with
Crazy Eddie's GUI System[
^] could also be an option.
Starting from scratch directly on top of DirectX is a lot of work, so leveraging an existing engine should speed up development.
Best regards
Espen Harlinn