I think that Blender requires more work to achieve the same results as 3DSMax, but I'm not totally sure.
The new Blender (2.5, in beta) has some truly massive GUI overhauls that make it look modern... VERY modern.
Compare:


and the new one:


Hopefully this workflow is much easier, and will attract more people to come... especially from commercial users.

Nice

I heard Blender was confusing to use, maybe this could help.

Btw were you planning to use it to design OTCalc?

It's a lot easier to design things with software after you have a drawn up copy of it, that way you can import what you have as a template then follow it and such. I don't know if you can do that in Blender though.

Cool topic! I did to do alot in 3D software, notthat I was good at it at all but I tried quite a few pieces of software. Anim8or is a pretty good piece of freeware but the best 3d freeware is of course blender. Never got the hang of it though I was too impatient for it simply because the GUI is very confusing in the beginning, all left and right mouse-clicks are seemingly reversed. It is said however that once you get the hang of it, it's far more intuitive to use and thus faster then any paid software, 3Ds max or Maya.

Some very easy to use and cool pice of 3D terrain generating software is Terragen it's pretty cool!! I still want to make a game someday with my own made models and props...and I want it to be the best in its kind hehe...sweet dreams...

edit: ZBrush seems to be good as well but honestly, I have a tablet and it still worked crap for me. I guess you really need to be a sculpturer already in order to make something good out of it...Zbrush does produce extremely high quality models though...with lots and lots of poly's

Well 3D Studio Max and Maya are both a lot more powerful than Blender is. Especially with some of the plugins.

Isn't Terragen a plugin for 3D Studio Max? Or is it both an independent program and plugin? Or just independent plugin?

Ya, ZBrush is very powerful as well but it is mostly used for models and such.

Blender is my very best friend ^^ I don't have some of my best art on this computer, but here is one of my recent renders.  I also make movies in my spare time, and blender is the main source of visual effects so you can also check out some of its work over at my youtube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/Builderboy2005

The ITEX movies are some of my favorite, with part 5 having some of the best effects.

Sure let me just take another 30 min to render