The 3 year license thing is for the student versions of Autodesk’s packages, which, as stated, you can’t use in game development anyway, I saw a post on the Area forums, someone asked if they could use assets created in a student version of 3ds in a Unity project they were going to release for free, and the answer was no.
And considering my student liscense of max 2012 expires this july, I too find myself in the need to investigate other alternatives, I do have Zbrush but still haven’t quite got to grips with it.
For animation, there is also Iclone, which, from what i’ve seen, is very good for animating complex rigs, including facial animation and blending, i have a copy of that and 3dxchange (file conversion package by the same developers) but haven’t tried them yet. Iclone, from what i saw in a tutorial, also auto-syncs and animates character facial rigs (if they have them) to audio tracks, and gives you full, realtime control over the rig. 3dxchange can also export to most 3d packages such as blender, max, maya, modo, c4d, Unity and UE4.
And considering the only other alternative for a high-grade animation package is motionbuilder, well, it’s a no-brainer really.
@Bleakwise, Interesting stuff about inkscape, not heard of that one.