...Work? I am looking to build an in house studio for my personal endeavors into graphic arts. I was wondering, which program would fit best into most if not all of these categories:

1) Good Price
2) Can Model excellent Game and Video/Movie animations.
3) Would work fine on a New iMac circa September 2007 (320 Gig Hard Disc, 4 gigs of RAM, and a 2.4 Ghrz Intel dual core).

I have experience with 3DS, but I realize 3DS and it's cousin Maya are expensive (2,500-6,500). So I was hoping whoever answers could weighing in the third option in case it might have both feature sets at it's slimmer cost. Basically, which is best for the type of environment it needs to be in (see list above).