I'd say the best one you can get for free is Truespace 3 or Gamespace light, you can get gamespace light at www.caligari.com and search for Truespace 3 in google, truespace 3 doesn't use bones to animate so you hae to use limbs the gui is awkward, the tools are easy to use and animations use physics, and if you use metaballs and physics you can make water and for it to animate most free modellers usually can't do that, as for gamespace light it lets you have all the functions of gamespace apart from you can only save under a restriction of polycounts.
Can anyone tell me the theory of knowledge?