| The "big three" in the field are Maya, SoftImage, and Houdini. There are others, but those are the ones that are used for film and TV production work. They're all megabucks for commercial licenses, but you can get legit versions for free from the manufacturers websites (not sure about softimage), with only a few restrictions. The best bargain is the $100 Houdini "starving artist" edition which is basically the same as the $5000 version if you promise to just use it for personal/educational work.
However they're not easy to learn. In fact they take months to even get the basics down (I can use Houdini, but not the other two, and never found time to learn). They're obviously not aimed at 10 year olds, but it's amazing what kids like that can do if they want to, and learning the software is a lot easier than learning to actually do something good with it, so they're maybe work a look. Just don't let him get depressed when he fires them up and hasn't got a clue how to use them - follow the tutorials and he might get there in a few years. | 
