I would say poser is the place to start for a 3d beginner. Poser is fairly simple and straight forward to use. And the great thing is that you've already found the #1 resourse and support site. Also you can get a copy of Poser 3 (older version) for free or at least for the cost of a magazine as it has been given out with more than one 3D magazine. This way you can get your feet wet, but I believe that Poser 4 has more advanced features. As for other programs there are several that are used along side of poser and yes some are freeware. But I'm not going to go into that because I'm not familar with them enough to recommend any of them.