Uhh this makes me feel old. These were like university age for me. I played with Dr. Genius painting software when I was child.
(1) http://www.povray.org/news/moray-announcement.phphttp://www....
I was going to model a lot of pieces and make a game or something, but I spent so much time on the head that I gave up after that.
My favorite early learning app was wings 3d, really fantastic modeling flow and creates clean messages by default