I am a bledererer myself. I have been using it for close to 5 years on and off. If you want to learn how to use it good I would suggest just looking on their site for the tutorials. To import your models into blender just use the import option under File. Select what format your model is currenly in and blender will do a pretty good job at sucking it in. Blender has a good advantage because its open source. Anyone can help add to and develop blender, so you get the best of everything.

My suggestions for modeling is to start off making your models my extruding edges and faces or doing edgeloops. If your model is a mirror image model, make sure you use the Mirror modifier under the editing menu in the buttons pannel. (That cuts your work in half!) When you have a finished model with not too many poly's, then create your normal map. The easiest way to do this is by duplicating your object and then subdividing it a whole bunch to make it a high poly model. Make your model extra pretty and smooth and add in all those details you wanted. One good way to do that is using the sculpt mode. Then you can use the Bake option in the render tab of the buttons pannel to bake the high poly details into a normal map on the lower poly model! If you need more details and to see it in action just search "How to make a normal texture Blender" in youtube and you will get plenty of tutorials. Anyway, thats my low down on the process of modeling with blender. Good luck!