[lukevanoort]

Having never worked with blender I can't offer opinions on it. However, when I was on animation last year we manged to make an animation after squandering half the time, having zero experience, and only one computer, a Dell that didn't even meet the minimum requirements. This year I didn't work on the animation, but the guy who did a lot of it used blender, and since you have to do the final render in 3ds MAX, almost didn't get it in because he hadn't noticed that MAX 8 had some weird installation requirements. The animation had more complexity than last year (we had walking things), but due to the need to switch it into MAX at the last minute and a few other problems, it ended up looking rather weird and nonsensical. So, IMHO, use MAX, because you have to for the competition's final render.