Toyota supra

I've always wanted to model in 3D. I can do it in Sketchup, but only using the basic shapes available.

That's the way it works in all 3d applications, in one way or another. You start with simple shapes (points and polygons), then you build on, or subtract from the basic building blocks. Try to see everything in their most basic forms, and you're home free.

The "simplicity" of Sketchup makes it kind of restricting sometimes, in the sense that it sometimes tries to help you achieve things you don't want to do in the first place. For instance, the auto-creation of polygons when there are surrounding lines can be kind of nice sometimes, but it bugs the hell out of me when I try to manually carve into objects by creating the lines first, and I have to delete all auto-created polygons every time I put a new line in there.

I haven't used Maya's modelling tools much, but I assume that there are some efficient ways to place points wherever you want them to be in the scene, then add polygons between them. If not, that's my favorite way of creating organic forms in LightWave, because you're in full control of what you're doing.