Now - where to download some talent???
If it helps, & FWIW of course...
Working with 3D modeling, creation, & animation apps itself isn't extremely hard, & talent is really only required when you're telling a story. When it comes to modeling OTOH your mind has to work a certain way -- it's kind of like how only some people can work with codes & code breaking & that sort of thing... for some people creating/building models is easy & fun, but for everyone else it can seem a hard, if not impossible to grasp bit of drudgery. Since AFAIK there's no predictor of success, no way to tell if you're one of the relative few beforehand, I'd suggest giving modeling a quick try.
Daz3d.com is based on that fact, that not everyone can easily create 3D models -- they have loads of pre-made models you can use to skip that part of the process & get to work aranging your scene(s). The app Poser is an alternative approach -- the closest thing I can think of at the moment is actually Mr. Potatoe Head, where you add features to generic, included models, then pose them, hence the name: Poser. Another approach is to mimic working with clay, so instead of drawing/painting it seems like you're skulpting. And yet another approach is to actually skulpt in clay or whatever, then scan your model using special hardware. Along the same lines there are several apps that let you import still images, e.g. front/sides/top/back, & they're working on using Microsoft's Kinect as well.
Character Animation is a separate specialty from model making, & the chief difficulty is the same one Disney & other animators struggled with long before this sort of thing was done on PCs... you need to make movement seem natural, like in the real world. 3D animators have it easier -- a good character model has a skeliton built in, so there's less chance you'll do something completely grotesqe, & you don't have to worry so much about the in between stages... e.g. a cell animator would have to draw however many frames showing a thrown ball along its complete arc, whereas nowadays in a 3D app you just draw the arc. Lots of 2D cartoons are done in 3D apps for that reason. Still the difficulty most people have creating, & sometimes working with models, plus the fact you need an awful lot of animators to do even a short video/film means there are several alternative approaches, from motion capture to stop action to scanning in hand drawn pages.
Somewhere else 3D software is used is for video intros &/or scene transitions, though often parts of the technology are built into other, sometimes terribly expensive video apps. You'll very often see those intros &/or transitions watching news channels, sports programs/commentary, home shopping channels etc. For the most part it's not hard to do that sort of thing in a regular 3D app -- e.g. stick your graphics, images, &/or video on flat surfaces & move them around -- so if you want to fancy up your video project(s) yet don't want to shell out big bucks for AfterEfects or Cinema4D you might want to give regular 3D apps a quick look.
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Out of the 3 apps DAZ is giving away, I think Bryce is maybe the most recognizable, being around since the mid 90s. AFAIK there were only 2 apps [including Bryce] designed to let you create rather than draw/paint landscapes, & neither ever became a blockbuster hit, though they did garner loyal fan bases. IMHO a lot has to do with practicality -- background scenery & such doesn't have to be rendered 3D in a film or video, & in games it was faster/easier to map 2D images to the game's 3D geometry. Bryce is cool & it's fun but if you're an artist why setup & render a scene you could as easily paint? But for all of us that aren't artists, who can't quickly knock out a realistic looking tree [not to mention moutainscapes & lakes], Bryce can be great. The only downside to the DAZ Bryce giveaway is that in tests it wouldn't run without DAZ Studio also installed -- if you really don't want to install the Studio app you may be able to find an older version of Bryce free.
Hexagon is a modeling app, while Studio 4 Pro is where you put everything together -- Studio 4 Pro also includes a media manager to keep track of all your assets etc. Unfortunately I can't say how Hexagon & Studio 4 Pro compare to their competition... Years ago I tried several 3D apps [bought maybe a dozen], & while I didn't find them hard or difficult, with parts of my brain broken I could never consistantly manage all the different things you should keep track of. I know the main, free alternative today is Blender, if you want to check it out.
When you register & *buy* the 3 apps you'll see I think 4-6 additional tools/plugins that are also available free -- it was a bit confusing & frustrating because once I logged in they didn't always show up as free options I could add, & while I had them all in my cart beforehand, once I logged in they were gone. Once you go to actually download the software you're presented with several files to download, by default both PC & MAC -- I downloaded 23 separate files. And while I got an email with a couple of serial numbers listed, I had to log in to the site to get all 4. The installation files are large, & once installed their footprint on your hard drive is much larger -- the 4 biggest downloads total 1.76 GB. They didn't really mess with Windows OTOH -- the biggest impact other than their sheer size was a LOT of registry entries for included Microsoft files like their C/C++ runtimes. Hardware requirements aren't bad, but you do need graphics hardware that supports OpenGL -- if you've got any doubts backing up 1st might be a good idea... it's not hard to get rid of the apps themselves, assuming you install just the 3 apps to make sure things work, but you'll not get rid of all the stuff added when those MS files are installed.
