I like Max for doing stuff from scratch. I'm more comfortable with its CAD like interface. I also find that the sphere of atraction tool in RayDream studio very handy for oraganic morph targets. (Of course magents do sort of the same thing and you don't have to leave Poser). The only other 3D package I own is Animation Master. I think you could do great things with this package but I seem to have a problem getting my head around spline based modeling. I don't really have any experience in any other packages so I can't really say if they are better than the ones I've mention or not. Thorgrim