hello, I am only familiar with 3dsmax terminology.
If I wanted to create a "biped" (a pre-made, humanoid skeleton rig), what should I do?
I stand to be corrected here, but maya (at least up to 6.5) doesn't have anything like this built in. That said, there are extra's that can be downloaded which you will be able to merge in and use. However, simple skeletons are fairly easy to create.
ALias does have motionbuilder now, but thats a seperate program. Your best bet is to just make a rig in maya. You'll find its a much better fit than using something premade becouse you can do what you want to do instead of having to do work the way a programer says you should.
A lot of people build their rigs from scratch or from their own templates and scripts. But there are some premade ones out there you should look into if you really want something similar to Character Studio's biped:Bonus Tools from Alias has some skeleton building tools, there's Final Rig, Mark Behm's autoRig and I'm sure many others.
-JP