ive been searching all morning for a readable tutorial for 3d studio 4, for a beginner, and i just cant find one, ive tried following the tutorials that come with them, and i think it was peregrine who said do, they are useless, anyone know of one?

Are you sure it's useless? Especially for low-poly, unrendered stuff like for morrowind, 90% of the stuff is the same between versions. What is confusing you?

its the fact that all the tutorials assume one knows the basics, yet, i do not know half the stuff their talking about,
http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/max/gr...grass/grass.asp
that tutorial for example, on making grass, i cant get a few things

whenever i make the line, i cant see it, and i dont know how to get the XYZ axis exactly correct doing it by hand, and if i click on the button above close nothing comes up, i have no idea what the absolute world stuff is, and setting the straw to 200 across the x axis, changing to 1d and a count of 4, doesnt do anything.
material editor, where the heck is that?
practically the entire tutorial i dont understand, and im about to give up on this program, i still havent found a single beginners tutorial that speaks in english.

Ok:

1) That's a terrible tutorial. Any good one is going to include pictures of each step.

2) For the xyz coordinates, right click the move tool (+ in menu bar) to bring up the manual entry box. In sub-object (vertex) mode, select the vertex you want to move. Enter the values in the box.

3) Absolute world is a coordinate system (again, in the top menu bar). All it means is what you're using as the origin/angle of the xyz axes. Absolute world uses one system no matter what object or view you use, view uses the xyz axes aligned to the view window, object aligns the axes to the object (so they turn if you rotate the object, for example), and sets the origin to the center of the object.

4) Hit "m" to get the material editor. I would say read the manual for something like this, but since you obviously didn't buy the program.... I'd go look for a tutorial book ($20-40 in most book stores) or try to find a good introduction tutorial that explains the basic commands.

5) Try www.3dtotal.com for tutorials. Those are much better than the example you just showed me.

technically speaking i didnt buy it, my cousins had it, and they got a copy of 5, so they didnt need 4, and they asked if i wanted it, i got it, but i figured out the material editor part.
i might just look around for one of those huge books, thanks for the link, ill look at the tutorials on it now.
thanks for the help, you can lock this now.

(no, i did not download mine, i tried to download a video that was 500mb before and i didnt want to wait 5 days straight downloading)

Should've asked for the manuals too....

As for books, pretty much any decent sized bookstore with a computer section should have them, or if not, you can find them online. You want one of the general 3dsmax4 books, I've got a few like that for different versions and they all have good beginner tutorials.

And I forgot this in my other post, but if you're looking for grass...
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/gras...om_glade_01.asp
That's the pugin/method I used in that grass image I posted in one of the other threads.

thanks for the help, i should get around to getting that manual, problem is, my cousins are hopeless, sure, their freaks with computers (one of them has 7 servers in his room) but their hopeless with remembering stuff, it took me 4 months just to get a box of blank dvd-r's.