AlLewis there's one thing people recommending 'forgot'to mention about DAZ Studio. While it is free, you pay a price for using it, if you like it or not.

If you ever decide to use Poser instead (and eventually you will, since D/S is like Poser used to be 6 years ago) you will have one major problem..... integration with Poser. You will need to redo all of your work, since your work CANNOT be opened or imported into Poser at all. DAZ prevents users from doing that. You can open your Poser work in D/S, but DAZ doesn't allow you to go the other way around.

Second major problem with D/S is integration with other applications. Due to DAZ not giving the file format free to others, D/S does not integrate well with other applications, besides Bryce. so if you ever are going to use a different application for rendering (for example Vue or Lightwave), you're in for some trouble.

Poser on the other hand works well with other applications and a lot of them around can open Poser files directly (included animation).

So before you go and do lot's of work with D/S consider these matters. DAZ wants to bind you to them as a customer, while E-Frontier (makers of Poser) give you freedom of what you do wih your final work.

Also just keep in mind that all the free stuff people are directing you to, are free for sure, but are either lacking all of the modern features or are simply outdated. Bryce 5 is over 5yrs old and D/S can be compared to Poser 4 which is more then 6yrs old.

I recommend you look around to different applications before you make a final choice.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk