I'm used to working with Maya, but it's modeling tools make me want to rip my hair out and eat it with mayonaise. I've heard Lightwave is good in the modeling department, but I've also heard about this new and free program called Wings3D that is supposed to be a really good FREE subdivision modeller. Anyone have any experience with it?

I enjoy using Wings 3D but it doesn't do any texturing, animation, skeletons, etc., what so ever.

I'm still just getting started in modeling, and Wings 3D is the only modeling program that's ever made sense to me out of box, and it's interface is very friendly if you like right click menus as opposed to navigating some bizarre tool button menu that makes sense only to the developers. It won't protect you from yourself, but once you get the hang of it it'll treat you well.

Only real deficiency I find with it's design is how hard it is to punch a hole through a model. There's no tool to do it and the way the tutorial writers use is a very, VERY awkward process that doesn't work very logically. (Not to mention I've had some damn wierd jaggies result from it)

All in all, I don't have enough experience with Maya to recommend Wings over maya, but if you use wings to make a model and Maya to texture and animate it, I suppose that works. You might want to use Maya's boolean subtract stuff for punching holes, and switch back and forth between modelers, though.