I think I started with a free version of Poser 4 which was on one of those CD/DVDs giveaways on those expensive 3D magazines of the time.  I had a play and was not impressed at all and wondered why so many people wanted pictures of those strange wooden artist posing models.  Later on I fell across a few forums and I could see what people were doing with it and I had another go.  For the first few weeks all the renders I produced were black featureless and oblong.  How was I to know you needed lights, hang on I have added lights and still have a grey featureless square, it took a while for me to discover that cameras can see through walls in preview but not when rendering.  

All of that was in late 2000 and it took six years to be able to produce something like this, if I was lucky and i had the money to buy something of this quality.

Nearly 17 years on I get something like this, created by a lot of commercial content and dial spinning but at least the figure is a one off.  That said most my renders but still more by luck than skill and usually only after numerous failures.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.