Any 3D artists interested in trying a very powerful modeling application for free might want to look at Caligari trueSpace. Caligari was purchased by Microsoft, and is now giving away the latest version 7.6 of trueSpace for free. My first 3D application was trueSpace1.0, but I ended up with Carrara and Vue as my primary 3D applications. The free version is the complete commercial version with no limitations. The video tuts are also free.

TrueSpace has modeling capabilities beyond Carrara (and cerainly Vue), IMHO, and has a real time rendering engine that is close to photographic, and is FAST! With my GT8800, it is WAY beyond the Carrara and Vue OpenGL modes -- as I just discovered.