I did about 45% the VERY TEDIOUS tutorials included with Maya and learned a lot. It just takes for ever to get places and sometimes easy to forget. Any 3D is hard to learn, just rough it.
I believe 3DSMAX is the best userfriendly program.. because it's easy to understand.. Yet I do believe Cinema4D is rather good aswell.. only less easy perhaps?
I recommend 3d Studio Max since you could find a lot of tutorials and resources for it. You could interact with other users since it is used by many people.
Yeah, 3DS is probably the best choice becaue it's easy to use and kind of the industry standard or at least the most popular 3D app. It's also the easiest to learn because there are many tutorials out there, some good free ones though. I'd recommend only looking for video tutorials because text tutorials are pretty useless for 3D Apps imo.
Erm try 3D studio max or cinema 4D both are capable of producing high quality animations check out the site c4dcafe.com they have some great free tutorials and resources on their.