Do you ever working with MAX? With MAX help for example you can learn this soft, without books or tutors, everything included Just I think Alias try to make more money creating a “bad” help and if you want you can buy DVD, books and so on and so on. But descreet making money by different way: you must purchase plug-in for MAX to normally work in this soft. And Maya is really most powerful 3d soft ever. Actually if you bought the program it comes in a nice box with books and unlimited has 4 disks 1 for Maya Unl for windows and the other for other operating systems AND YES 2 disks with tutorials and to get you started. and Yes my version Maya 5 also came with a free DVD Patch Modeling for Visual effects for Maya 5 from Alias