Hi Mark, a couple of inexpensive commerical options that have potential are:

Carrara http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/carrara (Carrara 7 Express version is $90).

and

3DPaintBrush http://www.3dpaintbrush.com ($99 introductory price).


I think both of those do a good job of OBJ importing preserving the vertex normals - it has been a while since I have tested Carrara but I did recently verify that for 3DPaintBrush.

- Michael