Welcome to Gaia! ::

Has anyone used that program?
If so, what are your experiences with it?
Is it really hard to get a hang of, or is it easy?
Could you post any of your work from it?

Thanks a million everybody!

personally, i started using max in 1996. at the time, i bought a book full of tutorials that really helped me learn all of the basics of modeling tools, materials, lights, rendering and post effects. before that i had used caligari truespace, so i had a basic knowledge of working in 3d. truespace i found pretty easy to learn on my own without tutorials or books, but it's a limited piece of software compared to 3dsmax or maya.

back in the late 90s it was easy to learn max fairly comprehensively because the tools and technologies were much fewer and more limited. because of that it was also easy to learn the new stuff as autodesk released new versions over the years. i'd imagine it'd be harder, or at least take much longer, to get a good idea of all the tools and techniques available starting fresh today. you don't need to know everything in order to get started, though. there are a lot of different ways to achieve the same result, and most of the tools are just there because they can accomplish the task with the most efficiency.

personally max is my favorite 3d package to date. i touched on softimage and lightwave a bit; softimage is pretty complex, and lightwave's interface didn't particularly appeal to me. i also don't see lightwave widely used in the industry. i understand it has a small but tight-knit community. hardcore fans i guess =) maya is probably the most comparable package with max. i started learning maya in 1999 and have used it in college and professionally since then. in my experience, max is a more artist-friendly software. maya is more powerful, but it takes a lot of technical knowledge to take advantage of that.