Yea, I do quite a bit of 3-d modeling. There are a couple of free programs out there. Wings 3D is the best free modeler, Blender is more featured but less intuitive, and then there are free rendering programs like YAFRAY. Also Caligari TrueSpace has older versions of their commercial CG modeling programs for free, I think the latest free one is TrueSpace 4.3. Feel free to email me if you want to know anything else.
www.wings3d.com
www.blender3d.com
www.yafray.org
www.caligari.com/