Go have a look at: http://www.3d-coat.com
Awesome software --- good competition for Z-Brush (and they claim that it's much easier GUI and toolset to "get your head around", than Z-Brush!)
The pricing is outstanding for what you get: http://www.3d-coat.com/buy-now/
-----------
PRICE NOTICE!
In the interval September 15 – October 15, 2010 only 3D-Coat V 3.5 Full professional version will be available at $235 US for everyone. Starting from October 16, 2010 the 3D-Coat Full professional version will be priced $349 US with no special discount throughout trial period.
At the same time, the policy on the 3D-Coat Educational version will change too. We will be offering 3D-Coat to students, hobbyists and amateurs pursuing non-commercial goals, so as senior people and unemployed at $99 US.
Limitation of Education version:
1) no commercial usage
2) textures size to export is limited to 2048x2048
3) layers amout is limited to 7
-----------
I don't even have a computer (yet) that can run this,
but the online tutorials http://www.3d-coat.com/tutorial/
and the online manual http://www.3d-coat.com/tutorial/voxel-video-manual/
look REALLY good to me! I'll be getting it the moment the "hobbyist" $99.xx license option starts in a month's time!!
If anybody reading this has already got this software...
---I'd love to hear discussion of how the "workflow" (pipeline?) between it and Octane is working out...
Obviously, a plug-in to "marry" the two programs smoothly would be REALLY great!....
---already being discussed in the 3D-Coat Forum discussion of future developments!