Get the real 3D Studio modeling software if you can... pricey but its what the pros use... *.3ds files etc are made from it.
I'd do a ton of research man - I've bought more 3d software than I can use because there is something wrong with all of it.. and frankly its the overlap of things that do work that collectively serve as the tools to use.. if that doesn't make sense.. let me rephrase - sometimes three product together do one task I want through a bunch of labor.. sometimes that's good.. sometimes its because none of those hypothetical products 100% did what they said they would and I HAD to resort to multiple "passes" to get a particular job done.
If you like deisnging games.. PERHAPS .. you get that free FPSC and play a bit.. check out the realmcrafter demo... (FREE ..version 2 is supposed to be better but no free demo) ... um.. Scope out more than one game engine.. Irrlicht, Torque, Ogre, OpenGL, OpenGraph, DarkGDK C++ (free), DarkGDK.Net (30$ = no brainer) um... yeah...
I personally like 3DWS sold here - bought the engineering package - basically program plus some decent media textures.. um... Truespace many like, Milkshape is a decent modeler.. TED terrain Editor? Decent for sure.. not perfect .. depends on your target game engine working well with one or more of the file formats TED terrain editor saves to.. same story for all media creation tools if you ask me..
Um.. that's all I have for now sir.. good luck.. and spend slowly and wisely as possible.. after all all those software purchases are typically "ALL SALES FINAL - No REFUNDS" LOL
--Jason