I tried Blender but it's amazing how unintuitive layout design it still has. Gmax, which is a stripped down 3dmax, is much better in design. It's not powerful as Blender but I could make a model pretty damn fast. I guess some people are somehow naturally better at using certain programs because I tried the real 3dmax(2010) and I did a good model without trying hard at all. But most importantly, I had fun. Is there a way I could import GMax files to Blender?

I am sure Blender can import 3ds or more certainly OBJ.

Blender imports 3ds files from old versions of 3dmax i believe.