Hello everyone,
First of all I want to say that I’m not really a designer, I’m a web developer who’s working a lot with flash / flex. Now I’ve come in contact with 3ds max and papervision3d. What I would like to do is to export an animation as a collada but I’m having problem animating the model because its all one big model (not sure how to explain it better)

Take this model as an example:
http://www.escalight.com/tutoria...nda-texturing-part-1.html

Lets say I want to create a bone system for it, should I break the model apart to do so or is it possible to use it as it is? Is it even possible to break an object apart in the first place, for example if I want to move the head to the left?

With organic character models, it is usual practice to create a bones rig, either with Biped, CAT or a custom rig. Then apply a skin modifier to the mesh to make it follow the bones. You may need to follow some tutorials.

Thanks for the fast reply, can you recommend some good tutorials?

You already linked to one - follow the rest of it as it goes into the skinning process. The tutorials which come with Max cover this in some detail too.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

oh I totally missed the rest of the tutorial, thanks :)