You can actually find out how much you like working with Maya without paying a penny for it. Maya has a free version, Maya PLE (Personal Learning Edition), that you can download and use for free. It has a few limitations (renders are watermarked, can only save in it's own native format, can't be used for commercial applications, things like that), but it features the entire toolset of Maya Complete. The only thing that you lose is a little bit of time downloading the program. It even has it's own community on Wavefront's site, where you can download models, shaders, and scripts that other users have come up with. If you want to try Maya, there is no better way. HTH, Mike