I tried Blender which is free and shade, which I got with Poser and a couple of others but I could not get warm with them. Mostly my fault, I did not persevere long enough to get over the initial bump in the learning curve. Then I found    S I L O . Finally a 3d program that does not force a particular way of doing things on the user. Yu can set it up to work exactly as you want to work.

There is a free demo version. Have a look if you want if this is for you.

http://nevercenter.com