Hammer time!

Well, maybe. I don't know.

I know this is a very good (animated) graphics program, so it's interesting to me. Apparently, at least from what I've been reading, it's mainly used for Half-Life 2. But is HL2 the only popular use for it?

I found some tutorials online: http://www.mgforums.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-34695.html and even Wikipedia has an article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcraft but I can't get over thinking that it's hard to learn and perhaps not what I want. I have this (probably way-out) idea of possibly using it, or something like it, to put together a walkthrough of a starship (yes, I am a Star Trek geek).

Is the Hammer source SDK the way to go, or am I barking up the wrong program? Thanks in advance.