Tip 1: Please read the stickies, this types of thread p*** the mods off, hence the well emphasised sticky telling you not to post these types of threads, and offers the answer in the thread.
Tip 2: Well, as the thread is here and you wanted advice, may as well give it to you;
The best and the easiest are the most difficult things to decide when picking 3D modelling programs, ask yourself, what is easy to myself? Do I like precision and being Mathematical, if so then Houdini (Way way way out of your price cough £7000/£8000) or am I really creative and don't give a damn about complete accuracy and want to be more organic then I want Silo or Cinema 4D, or am I artistic and go for Zbrush, or do I like CAD and then I'll like Rhino or AutoCAD.
None of the applications mentioned there are cheap (Silo being the cheapest at $90) I personally take the creative route and thinks thats the easiest and find houdini(Demo of course) really hard, I found it difficult to navigate and modelling a simple toy rocket took ages because I really hated the interface but other people like that sort of thing.
What you may want to look at
Anim8or - Free, useless for DB animation, I started with this app, its neat, Neodelito uses this
Blender - Free, very powerful, has animation exports probs, but is very powerful, and is favoured by many people that have managed to get their head around the interface, Ooga Booga and Greenlig are our more well known Blender users, they've done some sweet stuff with it
Wings3D - Free, modelling orientated, it seems to be favoured for modelling, its sounds quite easy to myself, I know MikeS and Insanity Complex are two of our Wings users
and well I'm tired so I can't be bothered, read the sticky for more help
夢の海に目覚めること - Into the sea of waking dreams - I am by John Clare
