You should know that there are IPAS plug-ins to let you generate anything in 3DS (animations, meshes, materials etc.) based on a BASIC-like scripting language. It hasn't been included in R4 as a whole, only a single module (the Keyscript) has been adopted. Keyscript can be used in the Keyframer for Animation Scripting, but it is really only a subset of the global 3DS scripting language. The latter couldn't become very popular among the 3DS users because it was not an integral part of R4 like Keyscript, but was sold separately.
A similar Scripting Language (MAXscript) has been announced as plug-in for 3DS MAX.