There was a lengthy thread about animation in SFC years ago. The conclusion was that it was not possible given the SFC engine aside from doubling up on faces and letting them fight it out in the game engine.
I cannot comment on max itself, but transparency in SFC3 (only) is handled through file type. You can use *.tga which takes a grey scale transparency map. This file type allows you to do anything from holes in the texture, to translucency. Or you can use *.png with a single color selected as transparent which will only make holes. *.tga files are more memory intensive, *.png files are require less memory like *.jpg's.