I'm a programmer, who'd like to be able to do some basic 3D work, mainly characters, environments, and perhaps animations. Typically low-poly rather than high-poly, if that makes a difference. I've looked at the list of software on this forum but unfortunately that doesn't tell me much about them, and there are too many for me to be able to go through them and make a decent decision. Ideally I would like something that can load in Maya files but I have no idea how reasonable a requirement that is. Similarly, exporting in Renderware format would be great, if available. For the former reason at least, Maya PLE looks like a reasonable option, but I don't know quite how crippled it is compared to the full version or compared to the alternatives. Failing all that, I'd just like to know what people recommend. I'd prefer a free tool but I have a budget of up to $100 if necessary. (I appreciate that's not much by art tool standards, but I won't be using it often.) Any help gratefully received.

Hi there.
I'm just a passing by modder from the Fallout2 community and I meddled for a while with 3d.
Maya PLE has watermarked renders and cannot export your works. It is used to learn Maya, really.
If you want something easy to use give Anim8or a try. It can handle animations, movies and so on. It's free of course. No animation import/export abilities. It can import 3ds/obj.
Milkshape: affordable, geared towards 3d animations, basic modeling tools, it can import more formats than you can name.
If you want a top notch free tool give Blender a try. It can compete with Maya/3dMax. Hard to use. It can import many formats (including mocap animations
Another free tool I heard good things about is Art of illusion.
With a budget of 100 bucks I'd buy Silo: it looks unbeatable as far as creature modeling is concerned. No animation abilities, though.
I hope this can help.
See you,
Sirren.

The ultimative free 3d modeler out there is blender: http://www.blender.org/
I don't think you can get something comparable that is free or costs less than $100.

Silo 1.42 (109$) meets most requirements for games. Its a poly modeler with good export options.

However, buying silo 1.42 gets you a free copy of Silo 2.0 when it comes out, along with immediate access to the Silo2 beta 6 which is very stable.

For 109$ you gets a great modeler, displacement painting with normal map export, texture mapping and vertex pinning and topological brushes for the reorganization of meshes.

Beyond that Silo is my first choice over LW, Maya or Max (although admitedly, I dont use LW often) because its so fast as well as easy to pick up.

Good luck

try belender's new release (2.43 I believe). It is said to be as good as the big boys (max, maya, xsi etc.) and it has sculpting too :)

Yea it's true, blender is as powerful as anything. Just some of the newer complex stuff isn't documented as well (as far as I know).