Same here but for me it took 7 years to get to a decent level. I nopened Max the first time in 1999. There was a lot of back and forth and a sprint at the last year. Take your time and dont get frustrated if you cant make it in one year.
Prior to 2010, it was an addon you had to install manually that was included in XSISDK\examples\workgroup\Addons I don't think the SDK comes with Mod Tools though, so perhaps you could find an old trial mirror for XSI 7 and grab it from there.
$500 is about 20-25 hours of work. That gives you 6 minutes per animation. Basically you deliver him 200 animations made in 6 - 7 minutes each. That's what he's paying for essentially. You get what you pay for.
Give NEX a try, great toolset for maya that made my transition to maya a whole lot smoother: http://draster.com/nex-1.5/ Someone told me that most of these tools are in the latest version of maya(2011), but I've only worked with maya 7 and 2009.
Yeahh he is right. Windows 7(i guess that is your OS) comes with DX11 even though your graphics card does not support. Yours is DX10. It shows you 2287 mainly because it extends video memory to the installed memory on your computer.
If i want to kill max instantly, I just do CTRL + Shift + Esc, then set Memory (WIn 7) to put the higher users at the top. So then Max is usually at the top or towards, then u just click on it and hit the DELETE key and ENTER it's gone.
Here's some more picture of the process, still have some empty uv-space to use and make proper lightmaps. Atm I have let udk make the light maps. I have used 7 uv's totally, 3 of them are tileable.
My system configuration is INTEL: I5-3570K, HD4000 GRAPHICS, MOTHERBOARD: GIGABYTE GA-B75M-D3H , RAM: 12GB TRANSCEND, CORSAIR: VS550W, WINDOWS 7 PROFESSIONAL 64-BIT, SERVICE PACK 1, 3DS MAX 2016 & V-RAY: 3.20.03
And some color variations, quite fun making these actually. Feel free to reply which versions you think fit / doesn't fit. Like the cameo ones myself in addition to 7, 8 and 11-13. I blame my GF for #13 as well :)
thanks. one more thing i need the music that should of came with the RM95. I cant use the older version on window 7. : so crapy I still cant get the other RMs too. could you give me the music files?