Yeah I"m not talking about importing a bunch of rigging and all that, just creating unique models and then bringing them in bare bones and adding everything afterwards. And I realize it may take months to build a character 100% from scratch.

So, this is probably what I want to do right now. Take a model that I buy, and alter it in a way that can't be done inside poser/iclone/daz. Just for an example, I want to make a "dragon man", a human with wings and horns and things. So I can do that in basically any modeling program, right? Am I right in thinking this will provide a kind of "middle ground" as far as getting started doing my own modeling? Something I can get a result faster than starting with nothing?