Well first of all welcome to SimplyMaya!!, glad to see you around and asking questions. I will stick with these guys, go with Maya. I started out orignally in Max 2, and went through its add ons up to 3.5 Since my high school. It was a good program to learn on, it was rather simple to learn how to do simple animation and what not. But it got boring REALLY fast... I lost interest and never really thought about it again.


Then i got into lightwave (dont ask me what i was thinking therE) and it is actually a rather nice program, yet it wasnt for me.


Finally i came to finally get myself a copy of Maya, and it was Amazing!, i found it rather easy to learn, it was very artisticly inclined and you could create amazing things in just a couple of minutes, all of a sudden, i was hooked!


Also another good reason to get into Maya is that there are alot of courses out there in many colleges and learning centers that focus on maya & XSI, so you will have a headstart in those when it comes to 3d animation if you plan on taking any...


Anyways, theres my 2 cents,
Imperator!