My vote for Blender3D , I have used 3Ds Max and Maya before but they are too costly for me, so I switched to Blender3D , for the first time it's kinda little weird mean to say the navigation and keyboard shortcuts , but as you get use to it, it's a breeze.
After that make some model , render it what kind of output you want and you can use those photo or pic in C2 and they really look like 3D, I have done this before in a game which is yet uncompleted.