It does come with Mental Ray which is capable of some pretty fancy stuff, so I might attempt the most elaborate rendering of a smiley ever, with radiosity, area shadows and reflection caustics!

Maya’s interface is happily a bit more intuitive than Blender’s, but I’m still getting my head round how to do simple stuff.

Blender, eh? I remember trying to learn what on Earth that was trying to do. Well, not so much learning it as trying to sneak up on it and catch it off-guard… Does Maya have Blender’s Original Flickering Interface Buttons that never display the same icon twice?