Motor control with AVR
I work mainly with PICs (and ARM) also, but the AVRs have very similar peripherals which will do what you are looking for.

The ATxmega 8-bit series micros have the standard timers and input/output capture/compare peripherals (similar to the PICs CCP). These can be set up for motor driving, with dead time, etc.

To quote from this App note on BLDC motor control:

ATxmega128A1 provides 16-bit timers/counters with : 
Four Compare or Capture (CC) Channels in Timer/Counter 0 
Two Compare or Capture (CC) Channels in Timer/Counter 1 
To generate PWM frequency, this Application Note uses three compare channels 
(A,B,C) of Timer0 and the Advanced Waveform Extension (AWEX) additional feature 
to Timer 0. AWEX function is available for ports C and E (Port C is used in this 
Application Note). 
The benefits of AWEX features for motor control are : 
• Complementary outputs from each Capture channel 
• Four Dead Time Insertion (DTI) which avoid cross conduction 
• Separate High and Low Side Dead-Time Setting
• Double Buffered Dead-Time 
• Event Controlled Fault Protection 
• Single Channel Multiple Output Operation  
• Double Buffered Pattern Generation 


I would have a browse round the site, read some app notes and check out a few of the offerings.