I'm sorry...gotta say it...

I myself(years ago) used to bad mouth blender a lot....and no one here has listed a piece of software that I have not used....I have even used others not listed here....modo, moi, wings, and trueSpace....plus as I said Z-brush and silo and 3dcoat and all the rest...but not houdini or mudbox....I have to say try blender for about 2 months...really try to use it...you WILL have a hard time going back to other softwares, beacuse you WILL need to use more than one of those packages to do all the stuff you can do in blender....I'm not saying it is as good as Z-brush in sculpting, but it is better than silo 2 in sculpting...It has one of the best UV editors in existence. realtime 32bpp 3D painting, including alpha. projection and cloning(again in 3d viewport) customizable brush...fall off, mask/texture, spacing, and, jitter....same for the sculpting tools.
animation is right up there with maya and or max.....roughly the same...maya may be a tad better, but why use one application for "tad better" animation tools.
P.S. It has an integrated game engine....it is much better than people think.
there is also GameKit, the inegration of the Ogre 3D engine(OgreKit).
I wont thread jack this anymore...sorry I am a bit biased...everything I said was fact, but I am also a big blender fan for about 4 years now....although I have been using it slightly longer.