I remember being obsessed with being able to 3D model as a preteen and devoured dozens of tutorials for Maya and 3dsmax but they were so complex that I never actually build anything myself until I used a much simpler program named MilkShape where you drag vertices into position manually. And now over 20 years later I’ve made more textured 3D models in picoCAD, the ultimate simple software, in a month than I did in a couple years of the above tools.

sounds like me, lol, before I realized modeling 3d things required artistic/visualization skills of which I had none.

I used to use one called Milkshape3D, I even bought it. I vaguely remember there was some controversy about it after a certain version though, like it was doing something dodgy to your computer if it detected that it wasn't registered or something.

Milkshape was such crap, i loved it haha. I learned modeling using it too, i think it had two tools extrude and merge vertices, so i had to learn some dumb topological tricks to do anything. Still by the time i moved to 3ds Max i did pretty well.

My favorite early learning app was wings 3d, really fantastic modeling flow and creates clean messages by default

Yes haha I agree it was pretty crappy!

Golly, when I were but a lad the only way to learn 3D software was to sit in front of easel for hours on end, learning depth perception by painting naked form after naked form.

You had eyes? Back in my dat6, we hadn't differentiated into multi cellular organisms yet, and had to model 2D worlds as an amoeba because that's all the dimensions we had at the time. An Amoeba! You tell kids these days, they don't believe you. It is the most annoying thing.

At least you had a nucleus. Back in my Archea years we had to metabolise 2D chains of sulphur and ammonia to grasp some level of spatial composition.

or suffer with Povray

since we're talking about old 3D software, Cyber Studio CAD-3D on Atari ST was also interesting: https://doudoroff.com/atari/cad3d.html