Meme-Free Zone

One of the programs I used occasionally on my old PC was Caligari's TrueSpace 3D version 4. The snag is that version 4 is fairly old and a little unstable - it crashes if you breathe too hard - and I think it's time I tried something a little more recent. I'm really not very keen on later versions, although it's still available as a free download, because they seem to have gone in the direction of making animation etc. easier but have somehow made the process of creating 3D models much harder, at least to me.

So can anyone recommend any alternatives? I'm looking at making models like

















Nothing hugely complicated, and I don't need incredible precision, e.g. a 3D CAD system, just something that looks good as a 2D image. Preferably free or not too expensive!

Later - just tried the current (and apparently last) version of the TrueSpace download, it turns out to be crippled and lacking most of the modelling features I need. Wonderful... And the icing on the cake is that earlier versions aren't on line anywhere, and in any case the unlocking codes are no longer around.

Later still - managed to find the same version of TrueSpace I've been using (which turns out to be 3.2) on line, and installed it using the code from my old PC. Seems to be working much better than it did on the old PC, probably because it isn't continually running out of swap space etc. I think for now I'll regard this one as solved.