Skeletal animation

Dears,
I am working on a project of motion capture animation and I need to animate a skeleton that animates the motion of an actor, so I started working with Java 3D for that purpose and I exported a biped body form 3ds max into java3d it was accepted result not so professional but as a beginning good.
actually I have some questions:
1- what is the best techniques for building and animating skeleton in java3D with referring to that the motion data will be received form the sensors and the simulation maybe online ( real time ) or offline ( parsing motion data file).
2 - should I use a special environment like ubuntu and special packages for real time simulation.
3- what is the best tool or package in java for inverse kinematics or should I build my own packages for that purpose.
4- what is the best way for skinning in java to add a skin to my skeleton.
5- is Java 3D a good choice for such work or there are other choices that are better (because I am new in 3d programming).

so, would you please suggest me some ideas, references, code examples, and advises form your experience.
thanks a lot.

Hi

Rather use Ardor3D or JMonkeyEngine 3 to make some skeletal animations.