I have used a few 3D apps, but Blender and Maya are the two I know best. Neither is better than the other, though each are better at different things. Generaly, there is more detail in most of Maya's tools than in the same tool for Blender, although there are some exceptions. Don't underestimate Blender. I personally find Maya to be the better animation package, but Blender the better modeller. Maya has better shaders and texturing effects and Blender at least has its own compositor (movie mixer).

I understand 3DSMax is good, not used it much more than a quick looksee.

Replying to Ploforia

Renderman is a system where it renders every single frame. Its pixar render farm, where the computer gets all the data from that one frame from the 3d software it uses. It gets every geometry every little detail in that frame and output it to an .Avi or .Mpeg format.

-reply by chili