What is a good program to get for a beginner?

2D , 3D , fractal ? to create which ? cause there are different programs for the different type of art you wanna do

 For what?

I play a lot of dungeon & dragons, I want to character portraits of my characters.

 I would suggest Daz Studio, as it is free.

If you have a lot of money, Zbrush might be what you want. But as this is a hobby, you probably can't justify $300-400 dollars up front.

Unless you intend to make your own facial and body shapes from scratch, you will probably need to spend around $200 to have a reasonable arsenal of male and female characters, armor, clothing to start doing a whole lot of characters.

The first hundred could get you shaping morphs, the second would be outfits.

Helps?

Thank you. I can spend some money, but I will wait to see if I'm any good at it first. I will try the Daz Studio. Can you give any tips on how to start?

Get an account at daz3d.com, contentparadise.com, poseraddicts.com, runtimedna.com and shareCG.

Mine the ShareCG, Content Paradise, Poser Addicts, Runtime DNA, DAZ 3D and Renderosity free sections for free props, custom morphs, clothing, characters, hair, etc. Daz 3D and Renderosity have entire forums dedicated to Poser and Daz Studio free stuffs. Generally Poser compatible items are DS compatible as well.

Read the intro to DAZ Studio beginners thread in the Daz forum. Find things that are similar to what you are thinking about and make a list of them in priority.

Then when you decide you need/want to buy stuff, Renderosity, Daz3d, Poser Addicts, Runtime DNA, and Xurge3D are good places to look for fantasy clothing and armor. Xurge is pretty inexpensive and high quality. Renderosity, Daz3d, Poser addicts, and Runtime DNA have a wealth of high quality fantasy items for various figures in various styles. (I make no profit as of yet—I do intend to make something sellable eventually— from any of those sources.)

Tinker with it and figure it out. Don't expect to make what you are meaning for a while.

If you have any specific questions, post a thread here or at DAZ or on one of the other forums something along the line of "newbie needs help with…"

Very cool. Thank you very much.

you'll find alot of things you need on all them sites and daz studio 3 is quite powerful for a free program ad pretty easy to use ( don't believe the poser users lol) for a beginner in 3d art

I will give it my best shot. Sometimes I don't have a lot of time, but I will give it as much time as I can. Thank you for the encouragement.

 Keep in mind that in CGI there are basically two types of programs that people use:
Modeling programs where you can MAKE your own stuff from scratch
and programs like DAZ Studio and Poser where you basically take pre made models of figures and props and pose them in scenes which you then render( make a picture of).
If you wish to make you own models you'll need something like Blender,Hexagon,Wings3D,Modo etc.. (there are lots of modeling apps). In DAZ Studio and Poser you can customize the figures using morphs, but you really can not make one from scratch. You can make truly awesome art using DS and Poser though. don't worry about modeling yet... learn to make renders first.

Thank you for your advice.

there are a couple people that have made some pretty cool stuff in daz in the past three years that i've been using it that are over in the daz forums so really to get a good handle on what daz really can do try the daz3d.com beginner's forums and ask everything from soup to nuts someone there will be glad to help you out alot more than can be done here to be totally honest with you