Blender

Fairly capable.
It can produce some nice work.
For free, this is very good as a surface modeler & it has it own animation built in.

They have not finished the import-export options in the 2.56a beta version, so it could be a problem moving to & from solid modelers. Stable versions didn’t play well with up-to-date Illustrator files.

The interface is like none other –
violates everything you’d be used to doing, which makes for a long learning curve if you’ve used any other 3d application!

Don’t expect to be proficient in a week or month. Maybe several.

The 2.5x version is moving to a different paradigm from the 2.49 stable version, but doesn’t feel Mac-like in the least. In fact, it resembles a decade old 3d CAD program in its complex & slightly convoluted panels.

3d modelers all use their own keyboard shortcuts to whirl & twirl & zoom vs pan & rotate. You can change these.

It really needs some rudimentary human models & clothing such as Poser or some of the other modelers use & would be useful to people immediately, then.

Blender models are oriented toward quad meshes. That makes getting models made in other applications a problem, because a number of those use triangles.

Getting human body models from MakeHuman don’t work well for several reasons. Same is true in porting from Poser.

If you are a longtime Illustrator user, the implementation of bezier curves in Blender may drive you batty.