Best thing to do would be to just play around with the modelers mentioned.

What works for me, may not be the best option for you. You will just have to experiment and see which ones fit your needs best.

Blender is free, most of the others have decent trials as well.

I have never used Silo, but just based on what others have said about it, it sounds like a valid option for quick easy modeling. If it supports RIB output, there are more than a few high end renderman compliant engines that are free for personal use as well. They can also be used with many of the programs mentioned as well.

I will worn you that the learning curves for some of the programs mentioned are fairly high. It all comes down to the number a features a program has. Or "bloat" as others have said. Having a bizillion options in a program is only a good thing if you actually need to use them, and know how to use them as well.

I am going to check out Silo, sounds like it is a neat program for creating wireframes quickly. I do most of my modeling in Blender (I have tons of plugins added to it as well, that are not in the official releases), having another option is always a good thing.

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