'AIST' company has a demo of a modeling/animation program that does some pretty nice stuff, including bones. I've been trying out the demo for a few days, and the modeling tools are great. It's a lite version of "Realsoft 3D". They call it Movie3D. They are selling it for $200.00 until the END OF THIS MONTH. After that it will cost somthing like $500.00

If you want to check the kind of stuff that can be done with the program, goto
http://www.realsoft.fi/gallery/contents.html

The demo is at:
http://www.aistinc.com/download/demo.asp