For 3D modelling and animations I use Maxon’s Cinema 4D (and lately I have also been dabbling with ZBrush, another Maxon product these days after being developed by Pixelogic).
But a LOT of people use the open-source Blender package and it has just been updated to version 5.0.
Blender is a solid and well-established program for Mac, Windows and LINUX. I did run through a very complex tutorial some months back out of curiosity but personally found it not as intuitive and easy to use as Cinema 4D, but that could be just me.
The upside it that being open source, to all intents and purposes it is free and that has to be a bonus and why students love it.
This video runs through the changes made to Blender for version 5.0 and you can download the program here. If you want to have a look at Cinema 4D, or indeed, ZBrush, you download trials from here.