So I finally have a computer that can handle some art projects.  I want to do 3D poser art for designing characters that I come up with and usually draw.  But I want to make computer rendered versions of them and possibly animate them.

From what I can gather, it seems like victoria 1/2/3/4, Aiko, Stephanie Petite etc are not actually the real software, but I'd need to get some "core software," right?

So, what is the software that I need to get to do something like this?