Anybody looking to get into 3d modeling but cant afford the programs should check out "Blender" its a free and very powerfull it is also widely used in the industry.
the key to 3d modeling, like anything else you pick up from scratch is to be able to suck at it while learning and keep motivated and practicing untill you get good at it.
I second ren's recommendation. When I initially tried out Blender several years ago it was a basic-generic 3D still modelling app, but these days it has all kinds of mad crazy features that let you do animation, compositing, physics stuff - it's just insane all the program can do - AND most amazing of all is that it's free.
Yes a few of the dev team members on our project are going to all get into blender, each learning a different aspect of it.
Ill work on modeling, Classic will work on rigging models and ooga will work on animation. This should help us learn the program faster and be able to help each other along the way.