I'm looking to create a 3D animation, and I just found out there is this application that does 3D modeling(?) "Blender". Did anyone in this forum use this application before? If so, how did you find it? Is it easy to use?

I have used blender before, but haven't done too much with it.

As for its easy of use, I really couldn't vouch for that. The interface is quite hard to figure out and get used to compared to a standard interface that you might find with that kind of application.

However, it is really powerful once you figure it out. If you want you can go to: http://www.blender.org

There you can download the Free software, and also see examples of some things that have been created with it.

Let me ask you this then. I have a logo. I need to animate it. I need to make it look like it's rotating around y-axis. So far, I've been trying to make this only using Photoshop (and ImageReady). I'm almost there. It doesn't look spectacular, but it looks ok.

Let's say that I install Blender and start experimenting it. How long do you think it takes for one to make an animation like the one that I just described?

unless you get lucky and find a tutorial on how to do that, I would think it would take a long time (i haven't done anything with animation in blender yet, just with still images). I'll look around and see what i can find though for tutorials and such about that.

Hmmm ... I might need to forget about using this for the current project. I need to complete it within 10 days or so, and there are other parts of the website that I need to work on.

I'm still keen on experimenting this application though.

Yes, if you are in that big of a time crunch I would suggest waiting on trying to learn blender. Although it is a very powerful application that I would recommend you learn at some point if you are interested in graphics design (particularly with 3D modeling and animation)