Some info about myself:
I have zero experience when it comes to poly-models and 3-D art in general. Many of the terms, acronyms, and technical jargon I do not recognize. The closest I ever came to "3-D" was back in the Windows 98 days using a Descent II level editor to design levels by adding/manipulating 3-D cubes(some of the more exotic manipulations involved using trig) and designing textures for very basic animation(think 7-12 frames max.). Its been almost several years since I had integral calculus.
First thing I must determine is what I need.
I want to be able to generate characters ranging from life-like human to Forgotten Realms creatures(i.e. Beholders, undead, etc.) with pose manipulation for high-res screenshots. I'm not sure if animation is required for this, but I'm not interested in making movies or action scenes. Articulated limbs should not look like sausage links or end up going inside of each other.
Being able to import ready-made content is necessary(morphs, textures, etc.) since making this kind of stuff from scratch is probably well beyond my current skills & experience. Basically, I prefer to start with good templates, mix and match, and fiddle around with them. Its the "lets throw a bunch of stuff on the wall and see what sticks" approach for now. For importing, I want to strictly deal with iClone and its character creator for now, so being able to import/export to/from other 3D programs is not necessary.
In a sense, this is just a hobbie where I'll be able to give life to my puns and parodies among other things. Some of the other 3-D programs I've seen out there are definitely way over my budget, but it looks like iClone might fall under it and be a good place to start. I just need to figure out which version & modules/plugins I need.
Also, how much more math would I need to learn or relearn? Like I said, its been almost several years since I had my calculus courses and I haven't used it all that much since, but I do know it can be a very useful tool for tweaking 3-D objects.
Any help would be appreciated!