Best 3D animation Program for Beginners

[Kyriakos]

I have tried Bryce, Blender and 3dsmax, and i can say that Blender is the most unintuitive of the three.
Bryce is the easiest to learn, but you need imagination to create many different types of forms in it, since the program does not have them as primitives (at least Bryce 6.1).
However Bryce is Phenomenal in textures that come with it, and in terrains/sea/rocks/trees.
3dsmax is easily a better modeller than Bryce, since after all it includes all of Bryce's options, and adds a lot more, but i found it to be difficult to work with in regards to textures and lighting.

 

[Plotinus]

The older versions of Poser are absolutely fine for unit-making. I believe that Kinboat made his masterpieces with nothing more advanced than Poser 4. If you want to make leaderheads I would recommend at least Poser 6, because it has the Hair Room, which is difficult to use but gives much, much better results than static hair props.

Note also that DAZ Studio is similar to Poser but it is free. I don't know how it compares to Poser for animation, though, as I haven't used it.

 

[T-mun]

Daz Studio 3 can open any Poser file and is very close to Poser by many aspects, but to my knowledge (and even if it sounds incredible), it doesn't include any tool allowing you to modify the colors or the textures. I think it is available only if you pay for a complementary plug-in. That's how Daz works, a basic free program but everything else coming from Daz isn't for free (models, plug-ins, etc.). They have limited-time free figures though, and a few basic models that stay free too.