For someone just getting into 3D design, I would reccomend MAYA or MAX.

I'm partial to MAX since it is the first program I got into, and has a ton of features and is very intuitive. MAYA to me seems clunky, but people swear its a perfect fit for a beginner.

If you get MAX the "easy" way then you're going to need some tutorials to help you get through the basics. If yo are JUST looking for 3d Object design, pick up any book by Duane Loose to take you through designing a scene in MAX. He uses all primitive shapes to achieve his results. It's an easy and fun way to learn about the MAX interface.

Sadly, I've found NO tutorial that makes learning SPLINE and NURB modeling easy. Both are QUITE time consumning and probably not even what you want. So go with those suggestions first.

Stay away from LIGHTWAVE. You'll thank me for it.