I've spent a rather frustrating few days trying to force an old lady to sit in a chair. Not a real old lady, that would be cruel and probably illegal. No this is a model in a serious game we are developing. I had this crazy idea that it would be real easy to get her to sit in a chair. All I needed to do was move her to a standing position in the correct place relative to the chair, then blend to the sitting animation. Turned out it was easy to get it working, very hard to get it looking good though. Finally I realized that the problem is caused by two things

1) the sitting animation is 90degrees rotated from the standing. I guess if I had Max I'd have spotted that earlier. But I don't, so I didn't :(