I tried just about everything that had a demo (lw, max, maya, rhino, xsi, etc) and chose max. Some good things about max: Virtually unlimited undo with command history (even has undo for viewport changes). Great set of polygon modeling tools. Simple but effective scripting language. There's even a visual script builder tool for making guis. Tons of scripts and plugins to add new features(some of the best are free). Easy to use material editor. If you learn how to light your scenes and use materials the renderer can produce some great images, and it's fast. Max 5 has a built-in GI renderer that's great. There's also some great add-on renderers (Brazil, V-Ray, Final Render). It's very easy to setup cameras and and lights. It's network rendering is easy to setup and use. The user interface is fully customizable. Named selection sets, grouping. Max5 has layers, but I don't use them. The symmetry tool - automatically does the welding for you when you're done modeling half your model. Welding isn't hard but this is a great time saver. I like the interface. I think one mistake new users make is they think they have to learn what every single button does. If all you do is model then you don't have to learn anything about the dynamics or character tools for example. The renderer is multi-threaded (important if you have a dual processor system). Supports opengl and direct3d. Auto-increment file name at save (file01.max, file02.max, ...). This is a lifesaver if you want to go back in time and take a different path. Saves a thumbnail image in each file (it's the little things that I appreciate, but this is great to identify what is in the file. Endless supply of tutorials on the net. If you want to get started download the video tuts from 3dbuzz.com. It also comes with a nice set of basic tuts to get you started. Bad things: It's a memory hog. I'd say 512mb is the min.