Although the principal is more or less the same, the available animation packages vary significantly in the way they do things. If you are planning to work professionally, I would consider choosing the package carefully. Maya is probably the most widespread software for VFX, commercial animation and series work. 3DS Max seems to be used most in architectual visualisation and Softimage is very popular with animators and modellers although, a common workflow is to export out of Softimage into Maya for rendering. Cinema 4D is meant to be easy to use and seems to be most commonly used by people who have experience in graphic design /motion graphics and by smaller animation houses.
If you plan to do animation professionally, I would advise against using Blender.
