it's rather easy to pick up alright, IMHO. But you'll want to try the demos to see if it can easily do what you like in term of scene assembly, posing, rendering against transparent background for composition in 2D imaging tools, etc...

You might enjoy Carrara too.

Here's my intro tutorial with Bryce 5:

http://www.thebest3d.com/pdp/tutorials/bryce101

Here's some stuff you can do with Carrara

http://www.thebest3d.com/carrara

Both are now owned by DAZ so there's good cooperation to be expected between the two and their Poser alternative, DAZ Studio (which is free until you start buying som of their addons like commercial plugins etc...

If you already have Poser you'll be happy to know that Carrara also can handle Poser nicely. Especially Carrara 5. Carrara 4 needed an additional plugin, called Transposer. The version 5 of Carrara can use Transposer too if you want Poser's cloth and hair dynamics, but even without Transposer, Carrara 5 can handle Poser walk sequences in animations too. www.thebest3d.com/carrara/poser

If you're still looking for other options, Quidam by N-sided might be really a good option too, especially if you're interested in more 'modeling' deformations, well but that goes into personal likes and dislikes. Try the demos to find out. www.thebest3d.com/nsided

Do you have some previews of your project?