Blender

Blender is one of a best 3D designing and animation software I had have ever used. Since I did some 3D designing and animation projects in last few years, Blender helped me a lot on that. Most important advantage of this software is that the software is open source software. Therefore we can use all features of Blender fully FREE. There are no trials, demos, activations etc. Just download, install and use it freely. Setup of the installer is small in size. Other than 3D designing and animation, Blender can be used to do architectural works, video editing, VFX (Visual Effects), 2D designing and animations and much more graphic and animation related things. Blender can be used to make small computer games also. Many features are included in Blender to make a creative design or animation for the designer. Some of the features are texturing, UV unwrapping, rigging, simulation (fluid, smoke and particle), sculpting etc. Lot of works inside the software is designed to do with keyboard shortcuts to make the working process easier. There are many free video tutorials made for Blender in YouTube and many other websites (i.e. Blender Guru). Therefore Blender can be learnt yourself without any expense. No any prior knowledge about designing is required. You can begin from zero level with blender.

As Blender is multi-purpose software for design field, this can be little bit complicated for the beginners. It is very hard to access some functions through mouse pointer by going through drop down menus at every time. Since Blender has lot of keyboard shortcuts, we have to practice them. Then the functions can be accessed quickly. There are same keyboard shortcuts for different works when blender is running in specified mode. This can be a mess in beginning. There are some laggings can be seen when the software is doing CPU/GPU intensive processes like rendering and simulating, but it is rare. These types of bugs are fixed through newer updates. Blender does not have a powerful rendering engine when comparing with famous 3D animation software.

Blender is free software which is always a pro! It is also one of the best 3D modeling software out there. I love how easy it is to import objects into blender as well how simple conversions are. Blender has an amazing lighting system which I use to create cool animations for game scenes. The rigging system is a very useful tool for creating in-game animations. There are many different tool to help you sculpt and create models. It has a pretty powerful text system which is very different to the text system of a drawing software. This text system can create 3D objects of the text which can then be edited and animated.

The few cons I have with blender mainly include that the software is not the most user-friendly. It can be very confusing to use at times. There's a lot of features which is create but it lacks tutorials to learn how to make use of those features. Likely other tutorials can be found online. The software can become very system heavy but that only for complicated models.

I enjoyed the earlier versions of it, with ease of use, hotkeys, and a clear, labeled interface

The new version is too chaotic, too massive of a change. The hotkeys no longer work/are not the same. Unable to create/edit anything because unable to figure out how everything works, even with the guide. Had to Change back to the old format (2.79) in order to do anything.

All kinds of tools, from sculpting to texturing, to video editing, to 2D animation, to modeling. Blender has them all! It supports add-ons and Python scripting. It has a great rendering engine for Path-Tracing, Cycles, and another one called EEVEE for real-time 3D visualization. The software is really advanced and allows a lot of freedom.

Can be hard for beginners, has a steep learning-curve. 2D with Grease Pencil could be improved and developed further, Video Editing as well. Although they aren't part of the core functionality, they are helpful and nice to have indeed, but it is important to note the strengths of this program are its 3D features.

Blender is free. It's open-source and has an active developing community that works hard to keep the software as up-to-date as possible with today's fast pace. I primarily use Blender to design 3D models for later printing and the built-in tools for model design work wonderfully.

If you're looking to create 3d movies, be prepared for work. The open-source nature of the software is also a downfall if you're looking to create fully immersive 3d worlds. Plugins and scripts are required for more expansive work, and finding the right plugin is a hassle in itself.