I don't know if this will help, but we host a set of Blender tutorials designed for complete newbies.  It covers how to do the same things in two of the apps you mention and in Blender.  Might be helpful in comparing concepts.

It's weird to me that people disagree with re-skinning blender.  Anything that can be done to make the transition easier for users of other applications is a Good Thing in my book.  I view it as a shame that more development effort isn't put into doing stuff like this, or at least into making it easier for others to "re-skin" Blender.

Why shouldn't Blender come with a LightWave skin, a Maya skin, heck even a Bryce skin?  Of course, there should always be a Good Ol' "Normal Blender" skin - after all, you don't want to alienate your existing user base by turning the software into a clone of other apps!

I can't speak for oodmb, but it looks to me like a lot of the arguments against it are along the lines of "Blender's better - why bother changing?"  This is kind of like the arguments I often hear against WINE: "Linux is better, why do we need WINE?"  The answer in both cases is simple: expecting people to morph to fit the computer is nonproductive.  If you want people to use your system over a competitive one, you have to make it as easy for them as possible.  If somebody has a lot of Windows software, they should be able to run it, unchanged, under Linux.  If somebody has a lot of 3dsmax experience, they should be able to use it, with as little re-learning as possible, under Linux.  There's a lot more people that have used other 3D packages than use Blender.  Why not leverage their collective knowledge?

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