Speaking as an artist/artisan:

Rhino forever and ever when designing. It’s versatile, affordable (especially if you’re a student), relatively intuitive, has a strong community, does freeform modeling very well, can produce manufacturing-ready models and is reasonably powerful for a whole spectrum of designer needs—and has grasshopper 3d embedded.

ZBrush for sculpting. It’s incredible.

Cinema 4D for animation. Also incredible.

Each one of these is a deep rabbit hole into totally different communities and needs.