It's quite the program. In the past, I had some experience in both Max and Maya (none of them long term) and I decided to stick with Blender since I simply "could do more, in less time" with Blender when compared to Max and Maya. . . plus, the latest version, 2.46, has a built in hair styling editor, which allows for very precise control over hair and fur, neither Max nor Maya have that yet.
Yeah. I watched a bit of the video tutorials. Although, having a Mac laptop with only a one button touchpad, I had to remap some keys to function as right-click/middle-click using a useful tool called AutoHotkey.
I'm surprised too. It's very lightweight. I am definately going to enjoy it!
You'll soon find that every 3D program will use three buttons on the mouse. Its pretty much a mandatory thing. . . I'd go and buy one, since it helps A LOT to keep the original buttons for the mouse (middle click pans, while scrolling zooms, right click selects, left click does many things, ect.ect.)
Anyway . . . Blender is a pretty awesome program. . . Don't be intimidated by the tons of buttons though. Over time you'll learn what each one does. The UV mapping is defiantly something to get into it as well, it was rated better than the UV mapper included with MAX.
The built in game and particle engines are also extremly powerful, allowing full game capabilities. Don't get your hopes up though, its still requires full programming knowledge though. Python.
Also since its free, the community supporting it is quite large and open. . . helped me a lot when I was getting started.
