I know that many of you will want to make use of either Blender or the nice free version of Softimage (Previously XSI) on the Creators Club website, however for those interested in expanding their skill set, perhaps with the intention of entering the industry, getting access to 3ds Max or Maya can be quite hard to do.* (legitimately)

I recently found that if you are a student and have an email address with your institution (.edu) then you can get access to licenses for Max, Maya, even AutoCAD and Revit for free using the Autodesk Student subscription.

Just go to http://students.autodesk.com to see if you qualify and register.

* I am not implying that 3ds Max + Maya are the only tools the industry uses, however they are the focus of this post.

Side Note: There are way too many versions of AutoCAD.