Depends on how you going to make something...I use Maya personally.

maya or blender usually

Yeah Blender is free.

If you're a student, 3Ds Max is also freely available. I prefer MAX because it's more intuitive, but i may have a bias there. Regardless, it's made by the same company that made Maya, which is the program Pixar is using for their animations :v

Its cool

When you say Pixar uses them for their animations you're just talking about rigging and setting up the meshes right? I thought they used only in house software as well. Pixar has made it a point that they use in thier own proprietary software for rendering, at least with the Renderman engine...

I'm not the modeler for this item, but I can say that before you even begin to model an item, the idea should be put down on paper and drawn out. If you can make a concept drawing of what you want to see in game, you will have an early start as to how the item will look in 3D. Always take inspiration from real world material and then give it your own unique style.

You should consider taking pictures of the character models as well and possibly using an art program like Photoshop or Paint Tool Sai, draw over the models to get a better understanding of what you want to see.

sweet thx