Welcome to Polycount :) Softimage Mod Tool is another good free 3d app to start with. Oh and Wings3D is supposed to be a pretty good modeler, it's free as well, though I haven't tried it personally. The built in search function here on Polycount isn't too hot, I like to use Google Site Search instead.
Well, if you happen to have an eh, "Educational edition" of 3ds max, you could look at some tutorials here: http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/tutorial.htm It's the site of Ben Mathis who posts here and has put a lot of polycounters through school. I literally passed a lot of my classes at uni thanks to him since I…