Like you, I prefer bryce. It has some warts, but it is so fast and easy to work with. Nothing really compares.
Poser is the best tool for human and humoids because it has some features Bryce lacks. But, it is not as fast nor easy to animate in when it comes to hard sided objects. The tricky part is combo units. Thus far, I am sticking with Bryce on them because it renders them faster, but it is more work.
Poser is not much harder than Bryce. Utahjazz has a great tutorial for it. Any version of poser from 5 and up is just as good for Civ3. Poser4 works well too, but I have not tried it and so can only mention that some of the finest units on here were made with it.
On modeling:
I model a lot. I model more than I animate. I get distracted in making the little bits and pieces and suddenly a week has gone by with not a single frame of movement. But, maybe 20+ items got made. Unless it is clothing, in which case maybe 1 item got made. I have a theory that nicer models mean nicer units.
I looked very briefly at Sketchup, and just didn't think it was my thing.
For free modelers, the one that is the closest to Bryce is probably the older (free) version of Truespace. It allows you to use the same boolean type of modeling, but the models are easier to make, especially the more complex ones. If you glance at the tutorial I wrote for it, you can get some ideas. It is fast, simple and very similar to bryce in operation. And, Bryce 5 and above can directly import truespace files. (COB). I think the older versions fo TS are easier to work with. I liked 3.2 enough to buy a couple of cheap upgrades. I slightly prefer 4.3 and it cost me 19 bucks as a registered 3.2 user (and 3.2 is free). I do not like TS 5+ all that much. Quickly become overly complex. Stuff which was once fast is now slow. But alot more features.
Wings3d is also pretty good. But, it didn't feel as fast as TS for me. And, I saw no point in working harder for the same results. But, Wings is supposedly really good for airplanes.
For ship hulls DelftShip is really good. I have used it for practise, but nothing ready to show. It is fairly simple and again free.
Blender is very capable modeler. Think of it as a all-arounder. Written to compete with 3d Studio. But, no where near as good nor as easy to use. Blender is famous for over the top advocates and a steep learning curve. I know I did not care for it, but it certainly has some fans. Delta19 uses this tool.
OpenFX is another free all arounder. Supposedly closer to 3d studio and there fore slightly easier to learn. Several guys on here use it to model with. It too is an all arounder.
Aaglo and Orthanc do great stuff in POV-Ray. But, it is text based and does not easily produce anything that can be used in Bryce.
The best Boolean modeler is probably Cinema 4d. If you are in school, or know any one that is, you can get this for around 200 bucks. Should you get it right away? Ahh, no. it is big and complex. Not as hard as blender, openFX, 3d studio or TS 7, but not simple. But, if you want the best boolean models this is it. I use this one the most.
The best all around modeler is Lightwave. Again spendy and really complex. But this is the one a lot of high end movies got made with. Crappy at booleans. Crashes most of the time. I heard a rumor that the new one is better. But, I lost my dongle (I hate dongles). I called newtek and the cost for a new dongle and a upgrade were almost the same as just buying the whole thing over again. So, I found a crack to use my legal software. grumble. Good modeler. Very very good all arounder, probably the best. But lose your dongle and they don't love you any more. well until you cough up several hundred dollars for a 12 cent part. Very good deformers. Very good magents system. Pretty good at pure organics.
Go here for some mind blowing images of what can be done with LW using the FPrime plugin
http://www.worley.com/E/Products/fprime/videos.html
Real time rendering at a quality level that can just barely be matched in bryce by spending days at it. And, that is considered a preview quality for LW, not a final render as it is not good enough.
Hexagon is a very good but currently very buggy modeler. I got it on a Daz sale for 1.99 (2 bucks). it is supposedly very good at organics. But at present too buggy and next to no support for booleans. Of course organics do not lend themselves to easy modeling with bools. not to easy to add/subtract spheres and end up with a face. Spline modeling is better for that. If you keep your eyes open, this can be a top notch (pro level) modeler that can be had for cheap. This is not an all arounder. It is a pure modeler. This is the program that until the most recently (buggy) version was used by a great many poser professionals to make their morphs.
Silo is hexagon's main competitor. It too is a pure modeler built with Organics in mind. It is supposedly on the same level as Hexagon, but harder to use but less buggy. I do not own this one and so can not comment much on it. It is 160 to hexagons 105 $. They have a free demo which also functions as a file converter even after the lic runs out. But since Bryce is such a good file coverter by itself, I never saw the point.
Cararra 6 is coming out in a week or two. It is a "entry" level all arounder. not as cheap as bryce or TS (which is all you really need), but it can do rigging like poser. Import poser files. Supposedly open and save Bryce files. It has a decent modeler, although I presonally hate it. It does not do booleans as of version 5. Not at all. I also do not care all that much for the interface. It seems to have beem built by owners of Poser and Bryce who could not figure out which they prefered and so it is a ugly mishmash which wastes much of your screen space. Hugely popular. Supposedly very capable. And a very fast render engine. Not LW fast, but fast. I got a super deal on v5 which includes a free upgrade to v6. I am hoping they got the modeler fixed by then. But if not, I can still model in C4d, LW and TS and just import the models in. I like that it is fast and can read Poser stuff without using Poser. Poser is 12 year old code for the most part and it shows. SLOW and not super stable. Also, Cararra is being positioned as the faster, fancier Bryce. And, I make more still images than animations... and Bryce is currently incapable of a few of important things to me. Volumetrics (over lap and they erase each other), fuzzy transparencies (do the same), bryce 5.5 does texture animation. Bryce 6.1 broke it. And, neither of them do instancing (for example, load 12 blades of grass and have the scene show 1000's but have only 12 variations... in bryce you end up with a PC crashing amout of polygons. I have scenes which are in the billions and billions of polygons. I can not complete them in Bryce 6 because it is too unstable and the memory overhead is too high.
Other pro level tools (means generally too hard to use and too expensive to bother with):
Maya, think Poser for real pros.
3d studio Max, not as good as C4d or LW but more common and several times the price. Great support and super stable though. There is nothing it can not do. So better here only means not as fast and easy. Also, I think C4d and LW results are typically a little bit better.
SoftImage XSI, LW alternative. Not as well supported. Not as fast. And, slightly more expensive.
Modo, a high end pure modeler written by a bunch of ex-LW guys. Very capable, but not full featured. 900.00 for what amounts to just a modeler is hard to justify. But, it is increasingly popular with pro-modelers. You can get an older version for 140, which is not bad.
ZBrush. Kinda a wierd tool. Not a pure 3d tool. More a 2.5d one. Very popular right now with high-end texture creators. Cost is goofy, at 500 bucks.
Textures...
I prefer to work in a older verison of Photoshop. It is where I make all my textures. I know Wyrmshadow does too. it is fast, stable and very powerful. Just not cheap.
GIMP can get it done for free.
Paint Shop Pro splits the difference in quality but for 1/4 the price of photoshop.
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Modeling....
I would suggest you keep it cheap until you figure out what you like. For modeling for Bryce, the easiest free solution really is truespace. Also, if you like how Bryce models in booleans, you can do the same in TS.
If you want to look at more complex programs and want to stay free, start with Delftship for hulls, Wings3d for planes, and the see if you like either Blender or OpenFX. Both of these last two take time to learn. And more time to get stuff done than the easier programs.
Questions?
