I know of 3D Studio Max, Maya and Blender, but only started using Blender a few days ago.
What is the best 3D tool?
EDIT> Answer found after extensive search in other forums. Actually searches returned zero results, I ended up browsing, but got a satisfactory answer anyways.
Thanks
Max is used a lot for games, Maya for animations. Both are used by a lot of big companies so experience in them gives you a slight (very slight, since portfolio is everything) edge if you want to apply for jobs in this field.
Blender… is open source!, is free… has a very helpfull community around it that can help you (that’s more of an attribute than you probably expect). Also blender is developing itself quicker than any other 3d package. And since it’s open source you can help, or program in your own tools if you need them.
Blender does have quite a steep learning curve though, so it’s a bit harder for a complete n00b to make something impressive looking in blender than in the big packages. It’s quite hard anyway.
i used a bit of lightwave in one of the classes i took.
i really disliked the fact that ou had a different program to model and anim but thats just me. i had used blender so i was mashing the shortcuts for blender and lightwave was going all screwy. but i got some good results. ill stick with blender till i have the $ and the time to learn something else.
i have used a bit of max and its material libraries help when just starting. the mesh modelling in max is harder than blender IMO but im just starting it
i havent used maya so i cant comment there
heres an image of a tutorial i did with max. i think its alot more realistic than what my first things were with blender.
One of my buddies argues that blender sucks. He doesn’t like it because its to hard, the interface is complicated, and active view rotate doesn’t feel right so he says. He uses Cinema4d I have never used it and I don’t know how it performs.
My theory is that whatever the first method for it you spend enough time to gert used to is “right”. Viewport navigation in all applications but Blender now annoys me. 
Also, IIRC there was a rotation-related bug for quite awhile, but now it is gone.
I tried maya PLE the other day; What a rediculous program! It didn’t make any sense to me like blender does. It… just didn’t speak to me…
I wonder if the mods and admins will ever go fascist on all of us and lock these kinds of threads…
and active view rotate doesn’t feel right
active view in blender is an acquired taste. for instance the 1st time i used it i got quite angry because it would not rotate the way i wanted it to but then i learned that the outer area rotates and the inner area pivots. its like max’s rotate button but it doesnt show lines
Yeah, there’s something odd about blender’s view rotation. But I’ve become used to it. Now when I go to school and use XSI it ticks me off that there’s a limit on how far I can rotate the view with the orbit tool (O or S key).
What I’ve read on this topic before suggests that, like macouno said, some applications have a slight advantage in one area over another.
Also, my reading has indicated that some companies, due to deadlines, production processes, etc. will prefer to hire someone skilled in one particular software package over another. At other times, the company is willing to train or let you accostom yourself to whatever it is they are using.
But, as already mentioned, your portfolio is the true indicator of what you can do for someone. If you can use package A to produce great results, you’ll likely have little trouble figuring out how to get package B to produce great results.
I do not mind the steeper learnign curve if the results are worth it.
I also read of people modellin in Blender and rendering in Povray.
Some two months ago I had enough free time, so I spent it trying to understand how to use Povray. It is powerful for sure, but does it really have a better rendering engine than Blender?
I took college classes on Maya and I still don’t understand it but I picked alot of stuff up in blender pretty fast.
It also seemed to me that Blender rendered faster but since I was running the two programs on different machines it’s hard to say if blender is realy faster or if the machine I had maya on at school was slower.
I was running Blender (2.24 I think) on a 2 Ghz Pentium PC, And Maya6.0 on a Mac G4
As far a rotateing the camera in blender, I am guessing you dont have a clickable scroll wheel on your mouse. when I want to rotate my veiw i just click my scroll wheel and move the mouse the direction I want to veiw to rotate.
i think the blender renderer is faster than most 3d applications. i dont know why or if im right.
but on my computer blender render blows away mental ray in max
I’ve always found Max to be one of the least user-friendly application because of how boring and slow the layout is.
Plus, nothing beats a community. It took me say … 2 days to find this place after I started on Blender.
I think I would agree with this. Out of blender, max, and maya I would say that I work fastest with blender. I think that a little more investment in learning blender is worth the effort in the long run. I like the fact there is a lack of ‘wizards’ in the core application but that things like MakeHuman are possible and available.
With blender’s newest features (see CVS) I would also say that blender is starting to cover the more desired features of, say, maya.
Can’t really beat the flexibility of blender - with access to the code and all. Things have been moving very fast.
The Orange project is going to be pushing blender in a more professional direction by example … basically watch with space!