Hi, I recently started with using 3DGS and have good experience with Flash Actioscript 2.0, so not entirely new to game design... Although I have found that with the way comercial games work, I won't be designing entire games as with flash.. This being so I found that I really enjoy the art of making and sculpting terrains. I have used Nem's Terrain Generator and have yet to figure out how to use 3DGS to make terrains, but that is sorta besides the point.

Anyways I was wondering if anyone could give me some tips as to which programs to use (preferably free) but if not then please post the price.

Thanks for your help
RJ

for modeling and animation, I'd go with blender, its free, has a great exporter to the mdl7 file type and has features the closest to a high end modeling app.

for textures there are a couple of options. I go with gimp but I know another one that many people use is paint.net. you'd also want to get a good resource for base textures. One I really like is imageafter.com it is nice for both base textures and reference pics.

Ultimate paint is free too.