[theory6]

I believe with the Windows Movie Maker, you can add movies to a timeline, possibly cut out a few seconds. I don't think transitions from scene to scene is available. You can add sound. If you make your animation scenes in 3d studio max you can probably import them into Movie Maker. Look up formats that it supports before you render. Even if you put in your scenes into movie maker, compression and saving formats in Movie Maker might be limited whereas Premier would allow multiple formats.

If I were you I would invest or download a trial version of Adobe Premier. Camtasia Studio is another useful program for video editing. With these two you can perform easy to understand yet powerful options such as fading, transitions, playbacks, sound effects and more.