I am pretty experienced with Maya and Rhino, i use them to produce architectural models and renderings. While Maya is a fantastic program, it is certainly not the simplest one, especially if you dont know how to use it and dont have much experience with 3d modeling. 3d studio MAX is fairly similar, the main difference between MAX and Maya that i have noticed is Maya handles NURBS and subdiv surf modeling better, while MAX is better at polyginal modeling. I have a lot of experience rendering from Maya (and can say it is outstanding) but not from Max as much, so i can't speak of the differences there, though i think either one can produce very high quality images.
The program i would recommend for you is called Rhinoceros (usually called rhino). Rhino is an amazing modeling program (and getting better at rendering), and is becoming an industry standard. You can read about it on their website
http://www.rhino3d.com - many industrial designers are using it today, and i wouldnt be surprised if rhino was the program some F1 teams used to model components before exporting them to FEA and Fluent type programs for structural and aerodynamic analysis. This is how i use the programs, i will do initial modeling in Rhino, especially what has to be very accurate, then import it into maya to finish the modeling (if any) and render it (applying materials, setting up lighting, etc) Rhino has 3 big advantages:
1) User controls are set up similarly to autocad, making it easy to learn as many people have drafting experience with autocad. The drafting style of modeling (as opposed to a more organic, sculpting style of modeling with Maya) allows you to be very accurate, very quickly.
2) Rhino can import and export a huge variety of file types. For importing into Maya i use the .obj (alias wavefront) file type.
3) It is cheap, i think 500 bucks (might sound like a lot, until you realize Maya can cost as much as $7000 per license!!). They probably also have some sort of free trial version, and you can find a lot of Rhino support online (free models, tutorials and such).
Rhino doesn't do polyginal modeling, though it can export polygon meshes. It is a nurbs based program. The basic difference between the two types can be seen if we think of a sphere - with polygons, the sphere is made up of a series of either triangular or rectangular patches. The smaller the patch, the more accurate the curve, but the larger and more unweildy the file. Polygons are good for things with angular surfaces, not as good for things like faces. With NURBS, the sphere is made up a few curves (called isoparms, there are splines, or curved lines) with the computer approxamating what the surface would be between the curves. NURBS are great for organic forms, because a surface will always be smooth. This is a very, VERY brief description of the two, i recommend anyone interested find out more. Hope all this helps. For few examples of my work with Rhino and Maya, check out our firms website at
http://www.sparchs.net. Its not nearly finished, but on the slideshow of images on the homepage, the first few projects (linden st apts, Gold hall remodel, and T+M house) were done by me and a coworker.
