Creating animations

[siskin]

Is there a clear tutorial anywhere for setting up a good enviroment for creating animations ?

I succesfully used  Animation tool N3 - with IK armature with Blender, adding to Skyrim with Fnis and playing it , however that is fairly limited.

 

Since I'm a student i can get any version of 3ds max for free, I just need to know exactly which one is recommended, as well as plugins and whatnot.

 

I tried using the xpmse 3ds max project in 3dsmax 2017, however i'm getting this:

 

I assume I need either 3ds Max Nif Importer-Exporter or something from here.

 

I hope I can avoid all this stumbling around and get to actually making stuff faster if anyone would be kind enough to point me in the right direction.