I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I hope my input helps anyway
I would recommend sticking with Autodesk software, be it 3DS Max or Maya. If anyone on the subteam is considering doing animation or something similar for a career, Autodesk is professional grade software, and the heightened experience with it will pay off later. I did animation with 3DS Max my first year in FIRST, so maybe I'm a bit biased, but I really liked it after I grew more familiar with the program. If you've still got an animation team, play with Blender and Max during the summer to figure out what works best for everyone. At the end of the day, the preference is personal. And for the Autodesk requirement, I believe Jscout11 is correct. I remember flip-book style animations being submitted previously.