Game engine — Panda3D (built-in self physics + ODE, sound, AI, graphics, HUD, automatic Shader generator, network, etc.). High speed, full official support for Python, free, well documented, as examples, will find a number of applications with augmented reality.
Russian community, in fact, no.
Unfortunately, exporting from 3DMax, if I remember correctly, also on the third place after Maya and Blender...