Blender 3d

[Andrew Tarpinian]

Started rock'in this. After having used pretty much every major 3d app  
I'm blown away by this program so far, and that it's open source,  
multi-platform and free. Plus it has it's own game engine and  
integrates well with other engines. I'm regret not catching on sooner.  
Going through some tutorial books now as it looks like the interface  
takes some getting used to.

http://www.blender.org/

Peter to your comment earlier about open source programs having  
trouble catching on, I think this is an example of it working.