[Jalerre]

I would recommend Autodesk 3DS. I think it's pretty good but then again it's the only animation software I've used and have nothing to compare it to. I made our safety animation my freshman year (along with one other freshman) using it and was able to do it with no training or experience just based on playing around with it and tutorials. I was able to make the environment and props in Inventor since I had CAD experience and use it solely for animation. It had a little learning curve but wasn't too hard to figure out.