it has a timeline installed in the same prgogram, plus the programming you would need for a great animation
cheers

thanks! well, i wouldn't necessarily call changing to max an upgrade... ;-) but of course, you're right, blender is not industry-standard and it certainly lacks a decent production-renderer like vray, final-renderer or mental ray. and it's sad but true that blender is not really helpful in getting a job, cause everybody just wants max/maya. but i love blender, and it's the perfect tool for a freelancer like me. it is a pleasure to work with blender once you learned how to use it. i cannot say this about photoshop. i still hate PS and it's workflow, even though there is no real alternative to it. blender's feature-set keeps on growing so i hope in the future there will be a way to use vray and the other renderers from within blender. but making big $$ sounds not too bad... hm, perhaps i should think about it ;-)

Sebastian König, don't be fooled by marketing propaganda. As open source usergroups grow mature and new people with new ideals come into business, we will see a steady trend towards Open Source software, not only in the software development sector, but also in the arts. Videos like yours contribute to it, demonstrating well enough that Blender is already good enough for a wide range of jobs. In my eyes, free and open means independence, and independence is always to be valued higher than a few cutting edge features you rarely need. People like you will be leading the industry one day, and you get to decide what is state of the art. Software is not a product. It is a service.

Amen!

I don't know in which part max is better than Blender. E.g. look at etch-a-ton or how u can parent mesh to armature in Blender. I don't even mention Blender's UV unwrapping tools. It's max that still lacks some features.

hi!
yes, i think blender is still underestimated by many people. you really have to go very far when you try to reach blender's limits. but, as i mentioned further above, there is one single area where blender is lacking and that is the renderer. while it does an awesome job for most of the tasks and the integration with the inbuild compositor is a real plus, it is lacking global illumination and a faster raytracing. a renderer like vray or final renderer can give you an outstanding and photorealistic result without having to tweak too much. and when it comes to raytracing and complex light situations they are faster and more efficiant than blender's raytracer, which is in fact quite slow.
but then again, there are so many workarounds, tricks and cheats and tools (for example the uber-cool approximate ambient occlusion) that you can live with that.
but yet i think that's one of the main reasons for many people to use one of the commercial tools, the integration with those production renderers. why should anybody spend 5000$ just to do modeling and animation, when you can do all that in blender? the answer is probably the ability to use decent renderers. and commercial support perhaps. and perhaps lack of knowledge... (i'm not speaking of the big studios here. they have there tools and pipeline and special needs. i'm speeking of freelancer's and smaller studios)
but time and the developers (btw.: cheers!) will tell and there will be an option to use vray and others from within blender. and in the meantime there are indigo, luxrender and yaf(a)ray. ok, i'll shut up for now ;-)

It is the best I've seen

*LOL* I would say, the biggest obstacle on the Blnder learning curve is the interface. For one who usually works with MS Windows style GUIs, it is a hell of stuff that works different. After all I still say that Blender is my future 3D Application after trying dozens of others. I know that the time I spend learning about the GUI is not wasted.

ah, i love this kind of specific questions ;-)
ok, try these:
wiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/Links
geneome.net/blender-tutorials/#animation
youtube.com/bitsofblender
that, and a some patience. and keep in mind: blender will look strange at first, but it will sort of "grow into your hands". believe me, give it some time, and it will feel very natural to handle.

thanks so much for a reply, at lest someone listens. :)

hi! yes, i only had the sideview as an exact reference in the viewport, but many wasp-fotos from google on the second monitor. so just guessed how thick it would be - and what would look best. it is by no means anatomically correct.

thank you very much! what a nice comment! :-)
after all this overwhelming feedback i tried to make my first tutorial, which i uploaded to vimeo - but it is very basic, it's about blender's GUI!
but don't worry, i am planning to do something more advanced in the future. just wanted to test out a way how to make a tutorial without having to annoy everybody with my "german" english accent and instead just use text-overlays (and yet i managed to mis-spell "clicking" the german way. uh, man...). :-)
happy blending!

thanks!
by extruding dust i think you mean the hairs? well, that's just blender's inbuild particle system, which has a nice function for doing hair (including combing, cutting, brushing and adding hair).

hi! your right about the rigging - that have just been extruded bones with bone heat applied to the mesh. well, i adjusted the vertex group names of the parts of the leg after that, but that has been so boring that i edited it out. i am even not sure if that has been necessary at all. :-)

i hope you didn't change your mind to not learn 3d, but to use blender instead of max! ;-)
i can only encourage you to give blender a try. it is definitly worth it. but be patient and start with some video-tutorials!