IMHO you won't last too much in learning how to use Blender, the latest versions has a 3dsmax mapped set of hotkeys, so it will be familiar to you, in the end what you need is to integrate a point cache of your scene and render it, anyways, of course you will have to dedicate time to learn it, Pencil is too expensive IMHO, but it all depends on your needs and budget :)
Cheers!