i don't know, if somewhere here is a existing thread about this, but this tool becomes godlike now.
If you never worked with blender before, because you thought, it's to difficult for you, please have a try (again?).

Sculpting is one of al lot features now.
features

I have bought a DVD (german), which explains the new things well. I don't know, if its allowed to post a link ( I don't want to put adds to you), if not, i remove it.
Blender 2.5 Das umfassende Training

Give blender a try - one of my best decision ever (after choosing my girlfriend, of cause )

If I didn't manage to persuade you, this video will do:
Sintel

I tested the 2.53 version. Did you try that as well and noticed significant differences in 2.54?

2.54 is more stable.

i also like the direction blender goes a lot. the only things i still miss are n-gon support and global illumination. there are branches that have work in progress versions of these features. i hope they will be included in the main branch soon. it's really a pity that blender's main coder brecht left the blender institute and works for refractive software on the octane renderer now.

So what's your opnion on the training DVD? Is it for newcomers or more for someone who switches from 2.4? Does it just present the features or has it tutorials like "Boxmodelling works like this" or "Let's set up joints etc. for animating a humanoid character" (or does it have both)?

And finally how advanced are the things presented there? I also guess the tutorial is in German but with standard English layout of Blender (I don't know if translations of Blender even exist right now)?

Hiya.

Can you point me to a place where I can download a keymap/GUI-layout for either XSI, Maya or Lightwave for Blender 2.54? That's the one and ONLY thing keeping me from spending time on it; I don't want to have to learn "blenders way or the highway" when I already know and am used to a different standard. I did have an old one for Maya (or was it 3DS MAX?), but with the new rewrite, I was wondering when someone is going to do a proper keymap/GUI for the most popular and standard programs (as I listed above).

Does anyone have any idea about these? Someone working on one? Anything?

I don't know, if there is a Maja-UI-layout for blender. But in the new blender 2.54 there is a option, where you can change key-presents.
file -> user preferences -> input -> presents
standard is blender, but maja is also aviable.

Hiya.

I figured as much. If Blender has one fatal flaw, it's that it seems to go out of it's way to *not* be like "all the others"...what it should do is try to be *exactly* like all the others...but *better at it*. If Blender had the ease of use and workflow of, say, XSI, it would ROCK. Now, if it had the option, upon start up, to have the ease of use and workflow of Lightwave, XSI, Maya, 3DSMAX, Silo, Modo, Cinima4D or Mudbox...it would *TOTALLY DOMINATE*. Alas, the developers of Blender seem to want to be "exactly the same, but totally different" than all the other 3d apps out there. It makes me sad.

Anyway, I'm sure at some point in the future someone with enough time and skill will come up with a Blender GUI for all the major apps. That's when you'll start to see everyone in the industry turn their heads and go "Huh...? Uh...WOW! I want one!".

there is no "all the others". there is no standard in 3d software user interfaces.

the first programs i learned were houdini and maya (wow, they were so different! ). afterwards the difficulty of getting around in max, xsi, blender was about the same for me. it always takes some patience. blender isn't more difficult than the others.

in principle I agree with Ventilator
However the point is an other in my opinion
Blender same as any other high end 3d package is hard to learn due to the fact that it supplies a lot of features
A game programmer should however ask the question
How many Blender features are really of use for game programming ?
Let's say 10 % of total ?
Blender same as all the other high end 3d packages has ebbe developed to make movies same as the one quoted in this thread
It is an absolutely a redundant tool for low polys real time graphics

...but it is the only low/no cost tool that got all the (actually working(!))features that I need to produce good low poly content: modeling, uv-mapping, highpoly sculpting, copying normals and ambient occlusion from highpoly model to low poly model, painting with different brushes and textures directly on the model, bones, rigging, weight painting, animating with several constraints, and this all with a proper export to mdl and fbx...