What is this Maya Program that I'm hearing about? Or am I misunderstanding that it is the Maya model?

Maya is a very high end (and therefore very expensive) modelling application.

Well, not that expensive if you consider the Complete version which competes well with Lightwave3D and Cinema4D at $2000. Unlimited version, otoh, is very expensive ($6000). 3DSMax is somewhere inbetween these two (at $3500).

The Learning Edition is free! It's either save disabled or creates big watermarks, but it'd be the best way to see if you'd want to shell out. It's made by Alias/Wavefront (although I believe they changed their name recently.) They halved the price last year to $1,000 for the basic edition, if I recall correctly. It's definitely not for beginners. I had the LE for awhile and felt that it was beyond my capabilities. Still, it's one of the most impressive modelling/animation tools around.

The Learning Edition still costs about $10 for shipping so it's not exactly free. It also has very large watermarks and does not export to anything in a useable format to try it out so is pretty useless to me. It does save to a non-Maya format just for use within the program itself. I wish companies making demos would at least allow you to export to other programs for the 30 day trial. Do they think you will make money from it in thirty days? Even a one-day trial with save and export enabled could at least give you the chance to see if it'll work with other programs for what you want to do.

Attached Link: http://www.3digitalcrafts.net/studiomaya/1download/

The learning edition is also included with the game Unreal Tournament 2003, with the added bonus of being able to export to Unreal Engine model formats.

The Learning Edition still costs about $10 for shipping so it's not exactly free There's a $0 download edition too. Version 5 isn't available yet, but will be hopefully soon. Maya the program is very popular amongst the big studios because a) it's very flexible and expandable with its SDK and MEL and b) it's robust c) it's one of the most featureful - the unlimited version comes with hair, cloth and fluid simulation. Even the $0 PLE comes with soft and rigid body dynamics.

I forgot to add that it also expires after a certain amount of time, but you can renew it (free I think). It isn't bad if you just want to learn the program though. The learning curve was too steep for me. I hear too many good things about Lightwave which I've considered.

I think it lasts for one year. I just updated to 4.5 from 4.0. Had the previous one almost a year and it was still going.

Maya the program is totally unrelated to the Maya Studios character the "MayaDoll". We have a Maya forum if you wanna go ask them about the program itself :)