[djcapelis]

Almost all the good animators on our team use Wings3d for modelling... it's worth trying, it's perfect for it's nitch. If you've used nendo it's similar.

As for blender, don't judge it on what you found a few years ago. It leaps forward dramatically with every revision.

I believe it's the only tool which can safely say that it has a built in sound and video editors.

Premire? I don't need it... it's just all right there with everything else in blender. That's one of the (many) great advantages to it.