Daz|Studio is my program of choice. You can do a lot with it, very simply. You can buy pre-made characters, change their resolutions (so you don't bog down a system if you need to render a lot of figures), change their sizes, morph their looks and body shape entirely, clothe them, change their poses and expressions, insert them into fully-developed sets, light the sets and render them.
You can also use plugins to increase the ability of the program - and I just LOVE the plugin model! - you only buy what you need. Some of the best plugins are those by Dreamlight, made for making lighting the scene easier. He has a Spotlight Pointer, which let's you know EXACTLY where your spotlight is pointing, and how big the spread will be, he has Light Dome, which allows you to rig up full light sets with a few clicks, that light an entire outdoor scene, he has Studio Light sets, which do the same things indoors. He also made one of the most useful plugins for systems with lower resources - the Surface Mask Creator. The Surface Mask Creator allows you to render a scene as a series of layers that can then be recomposited using a photo editing tool. This means that if your system hangs or locks up when rendering reflections, you can mask out those reflections, and render the scene twice - once with the figures without reflections, and once with the reflections without the figures. I had to do this until I upgraded my desktop to Vista 64, before the built in 2g Windows limitation prevented Daz|Studio from getting enough RAM in play and I'd crash when trying to render full scenes with reflections.
Incidentally, it's actually thanks to Dreamlight that I found AdventureMaker. He posted a video tutorial on using AM on his website.
There are also animation plugins - and the best of these is aniMate, imo, because it allows you to buy premade reusable blocks of animation, for a small fee; or to create your own blocks and reuse them. There are also many free blocks available, and goFigure (the company that created aniMate) often releases "sample packs" that are free or low cost (think $5).
With D|S, it's really easy to set up a character, animate it using the aniMate plugin, then render it as a series of stills. Voila! You now have sprites for your 3rd person adventure!
I can't speak for Poser, because I never really hopped on that bandwagon. I don't know if Poser has features that D|S doesn't. However, I needed a low-cost alternative to hand-painting art, and D|S is free for commercial use (although they also have a version of 3 that's for purchase, and includes some of the more commonly used plugins). I also love that every week they have a new release of an item for free. And that if you dish out $7/month for the Platinum Club, you get all kinds of special offers, freebies, and a host of items for purchase that are $1.99. They also hold special PC-Only sales, where you can get bundles - sometimes valued at $100+, for $1.99. It's really cost-effective if you happen to be on a tight budget.
Wow - there's my endorsement! *laughs* And to think - my original point was to mention that if anyone had any questions about D|S, I could probably help. Incidentally, I'm working on a D|S video tutorial for a client and he's posting it free to the public on his website. When it's done, I'll link to it here so everyone can benefit.
A woman on a mission - a budding artist looking for a place to take root, a builder looking for the right community - I'm looking for a home.