Here's something I wrote in the wiki, because alot of people don't know what a wiki is:
A wiki is a community website where all members can change and add content.
a good example is:
http://wikipedia.org
There's a button at the bottom of each page that says “edit this page†which will open a fun and exciting box where you can type to your hearts desire about a given topic.
The more people that participate the better the wiki will be. There is no such thing as too much information (unless you're talking about your parents...you know.... doing _it_....that's too much info...)
Take this site for example. Let's say you're a fledgling modder, and you want to say, make your own sail, and after looking all over the forums and the wiki you cannot find anything. So you decide to roll up your sleeves and figure it out yourself, and after 1 gazillion bottles of rum you finally figure it out. You get a fancy looking sail texture made, and you've added everything you need to the code so that you can choose it in the game while no overwriting someone elses work. You leap with joy and release to the public, they cheer, they say “That's pretty cool, here's a rum†and give you thousands of smilies... But then you remeber, “Hey, I couldn't find any info on this when I started." That's where the wiki comes in, you can quickly and easily add a tutorial detailing how you did it.
Here's another example. You are not a modder, but you like the mods and you would like to become a modder, but the sight of the code makes you physically sick with it's complexness(is that a word?). You do a couple of tutorials, add your own NPC into the game, stuff like that but it doesn't help. Well there's that whole code help section that lies empty right now. A good place to get a feel for the code would be right there, adding documentation for everything. It's not fun stuff, but the community needs documentation and you do too. You don't have to explain what a function does, but at least it will get you into the code learning stuff, and learning stuff is never a bad thing.
Ok, so I've talked to long already.
~Verruckt~
Rico: I know we're all pirates here, so I am sure you can think for youself and figure out dastardly ways of getting Maya. But if not, buy it?
Another good point is, you don't need maya to make mods, infact there are only one or two mods that use maya... and I hear the plugins are pretty hard to use still. Maybe you should learn the ways other mods are made first? Like with code and stuff?
I don't wanna stress this enouph though
You don't need Maya to make a mod