In terms of free tools, there's Blender and Wings3D, which both have strengths and weaknesses. Wings has a clean, easy to learn UI and handles some modeling functions (like beveling/fileting/chamfering) better than Blender. Blender has a much larger feature set and can handle significantly higher detail models before experiencing performance issues or crashes. There are a few other free modelling tools, but they're objectively worse than either Blender or Wings.
Basically, if you want to just model and let other people handle stuff like texturing and special baking, Wings3D is probably your desired tool. If you need to do the entire process yourself, I highly recommend Blender as it can do lots of basic baking but also has access to Cycles, which is a really great tool for getting accurate renders. We have plenty of modelers with experience in either of the two, so if you have any questions hop onto the IRC or Discord and ask.