i got that book the art of maya today looks great as it goes about 3d techniques and doesnt just tell you how you can do it . it explains everything.

also i said the front cover was from "LOM" but i skim read through the book and noticed it was vabarent story.

i havent yet got win xp but it is on its way. so ill have to format my hard drive as i have got 80gig of scattered files everywhere. which will take me about 2 week to sort through and put everything on disk so hopefully i should be on maya then.

also i have noticed that in this book there is often the star effect with about 7 connections, i always get the star effect and cannot fix it , and it didnt look like it had an effect on the render in maya.

the scenes in maya look amaseing. especially the textures. for like reflection maps etc. i am looking forward to that. but the textures look very complecated to do compaired to lightwave but looks like you can make very high detail with it.