Im guessing Maya or Blender, maybe 3ds max. I've tried iclone and various other tools and I didn't find them very good, they could be, but it does not look easy. Maya. Blender, max, you can do whatever the fuck you want with the entire mesh, not just the bones. Blender is brilliant for going back and forth with Daz, 3ds max (which I use) is ok on meshes, not with animations though, Maya I wouldn't know but at least there are pipelines for it, unlike Max.
Years ago when a new member joined the forum posting a thread "Daz vs Blender" I said, apples and oranges.
Each are tools, they don't do the same things.
Daz Studio is a simple renderer. You use it to set-up a scene using pre-made models, pose them and take a snapshot.
I wouldn't even call it a render engine, as it lacks most of the features that render engines have had since the 1990s. Doesn't mean it's a bad program, it does what it does (make pictures) fairly well, if that's all you want to do.
3ds max, and other creation tools like it are good for making those models, and while they have more features than Daz studio, they focus more on single models rather than multiple models or animation. I'm not saying you can't use those programs to painstakingly pose snapshot after snapshot and make a crude facsimile of an animation... it would be hard. Even on my worst day, I wouldn't wish that on an intern, when there are other tools available to automate the process.
The tools used to a)make characters b)rig characters c)pose characters d)animate, are all different.
Some work well together, some don't, which is where Blender comes in.
Blender is neutral ground between rival companies.
Often you have to export from one software into Blender, run a dozen scripts to convert the model and rigging, and then export it to the other software. This is thanks to the millions of helpful users in the Blender community, who aren't profit motivated, proprietary greedy a holes. Blender not only has creation tools, and a render engine, it also has a game engine.
While Maya was bought by the company that had previously bought 3ds max, notice they didn't merge the two products. That's because they are different tools. Maya does animation (among other things) and it does it well.
On the model creation side, we do the rigging for animation. The engine handles the interaction between models, triggering collision etc. This "stuff" has been done a thousand times for different game engines. Check with our friends over at LL and their "working vagina" for Skyrim. Different engines work differently, and Daz doesn't have an engine.... so step one, is look at engines, figure out which suits your needs, and budget.
