a) Money? Bah. You're looking at a very cheap bastard here. I spend only on what I have to, really. I've gotten by on DS3 (the free version), GIMP instead of Photoshop, an old copy of Rhino3 (which I bought way back in 2004-5 or so), and even older copy of Vue d' Esprit 5 (bought that in 2004).   Hardware? I only recently bothered to move my main CG bits from a 2004 Mac Dual G5, and a cobbled-together 2007-vintage Core Duo Hackintosh... to a brand new Core i7 laptop that I saved for over six months to get. Meanwhile, Wings is still a decent free modeler, Blender is even better (also free, but frustrating), and there are mountains of free figures, morph kits, scenes, and etc for your rendering pleasure.

 

b) spend some time with what you do have - I think you'll suprise yourself. In spite of literally knowing the underlying code, I've only recently gotten around to playing with shaders in D|S (and damn it's fun!) I see you've begun to do much the same thing (this is a good thing, y'know? :) )

 

PS: See that ugly-assed chap to your left? Mike 2, a freebie hair kit ("Kabuki hair" if memory serves), a free clown face texture that I modified the hell out of in GIMP, and an ancient "subdivided surfaces" freebie body texture kit with a home-grown texture ground out in GIMP. The rest is render settings in D|S and a quickie background whomped out in GIMP (I know, like the umpteenth time I said that name, huh? :) )