DAZ Studio is a powerful modelling tool, which is designed for character rendering.

DAZ Studio helps to create photo realistic scenes, that can be rendered by a software renderer or an OpenGL accelerated renderer. The program is specialized to render characters and animations containing them. Characters can be downloaded from the web as well as scenes, that can also be breated by yourself.
DAZ Studio is 100% compatible to Poser 4 scene files, which makes it to a good alternative to the expensive software.

If professional solutions, such as Poser are too expensive, or if you just want to play around with a free studion software, DAZStudio satisfies all needs.