You want to create 3d art on the PC or Mac? Well, the first thing that you need is a 3d program. There are many types out there depending on what you want to do. A flexible and well supported product is DazStudio. This is a mature and free alternative to Poser. DazStudio (and Poser) is ‘akin to a virtual photography studio, … allow(ing) the user to load actors, props, lighting and cameras for still and animated renderings‘. The major plus for DazStudio is not only does it have content specifically created for it but it can use nearly all the content created for Poser.
DazStudio (and Poser) figures can be easily loaded into other products that are better at creating scenery such as Bryce and Vue. Bryce 5.5 is available free and has a DazStudio plug-in that allows complete scenes to be loaded into it complete with the materials (which previously had to be laboriously reapplied). Although Vue is not a free product there is a hobbyist version called ‘Vue Pioneer’. This does not carry as many of the painful restrictions of ‘Personal Learning Editions’ which do not allow scenes to be saved, but you cannot import any models and a logo is present in the bottom right corner of you images. This is a small price to pay for such fantastic scenery generation.
Both DazStudio and Bryce are well supported by the free content community with many high quality products available on sites such as Renderosity, RuntimeDNA and Daz3D.
After you have rendered your image you will most likely want to edit you work. The leading free competitor to Photoshop is the GIMP. This has a large range of features including the vital ‘layers’ feature.