If your in a spending mood please buy me an upgrade to Maya 8 while you are at it lol. Just joking. And for all you people talking smack to ruana get your facts straight. South Africa isnt a poor country at all. Yes there is poor people but there are also poor people here in Florida as well as everywhere else in the world. Its just a fact of life. He has every right to spend his hard earned money the way he see's fit. Better spent on software that could advance his career than some stupid flashy gizmo for his car or Jewelry that he wears once a year.

Back to the subject matter. I think Max should be all you ever need. Ive never used Cinema so I cant really compare the two but Max is a verry well rounded package that can do just about anything that you need it to. If not there is always a plugin for it. The learning curve may be a little steep as with any highend 3d software but if you have patience you should work past that realitivly easy. I prefer Maya over any package aside for a few exceptions such as silo for modeling but since you already have Max you should stick with that since its just as good but has a little bit of a funky interface in my opinion.

A few other software options that are verry helpfull  that you may also want to invest in are Silo and Zbrush. Dispite the low price of 109 usd Silo is in my opinion the best modeling package out right now. and Whenever version 2 is released should be even better. It is far better than Maya or Max for organic modeling especially. Zbrush is another piece of software that you must try. Both of these software are used to compliment your main package and give you much better results in a much faster time. Granted its more software to learn but both of these are verry easy to pick up and start using from the get go.