These days, you have to be ready to be everything you need.
Since you already have Maya, I think you’re very set to move on. IMO, Maya has the most intuitive interface than other packages I’ve ever used (I love the mouse gesture, it saves a lot of time). And the additional good thing is v8.5 also supports Python script next to the old MEL script.
I’d recommend to finish watching the movie tutorials.
For menus or dialogs, I’d like to use my own buttons :
discourse.panda3d.org/viewtopic.php?t=2954