He likes Caligari's UI much more but he needs the import/export-capabilities of Blender. What's his choice?
Work in TS, export to Blender, then export to the needed format. That's what i mainly use Blender for. Yes, i know. Animation is a very special chapter. Which hopefully will be solved in the very near future when the SDK is out.
Or wait for the SDK to become available. A thing of a few weeks. They are at polishing at the moment. Then write your own or wait a bit more for the im- and exporters to appear. And they will appear. I know that a plugin is in development that can im- and export FBX for example.
What i want to say is: The UI is not a important aspect. It's only a question of learning.
My whole experience teaches me the opposite. An edgeloop is an edgeloop, no matter in which 3D software. Functionality is functionality. It's the UI that makes the difference. You can fascinate lots of users with a good one. You can scare lots of users away with a bad UI though. Counts for applications. And counts even more for games
