I can't afford/am not a student so I can't get 3DS Max/Maya, so is there a good alternative yet? Preferably for Blender?

Short answer: No, and there never will be.

Long Answer: Bethesda doesn't have the license to distribute the part of the toolkit they used to make animations in Skyrim, it belongs to Havok, and without that, we can't do anything as far as animations go. So for anything beyond adding new swords and shields basically (and even then, you can't add new first person view stuff), Skyrim pretty much disallows all mods.

just fyi: you can get the educational version of 3DS Max/Maya even if you're not a student. They don't require a student id or edu email.

Short answer: Not yet.

Long answer: Have patience: http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Blender