If you want to animate a figure in 3dsMAX you will need to export the mesh and then use either character studio or bones pro to animate the mesh. It works. Trust me. You will have to play around with which works better but all the character studio models are solid non-jointed meshes and the biped figure deforms the mesh just like poser does. In fact you can edit the "joint" parameters in something like bones pro so that the mesh doesn't get all screwed up around the joints like poser does it. If 3ds MAX had the posing dials, presets and figures I'd dump Poser all together. Also, premiere won't do a thing for you, unless you have already rendered the animation. Premiere is nothing more than a very good video editor / video compositing program. As for Bryce or any of the other lower end programs, I aint got a clue. Never bothered with them.