Ok, my initial concept for my nephew's birthday piece involved sculpting some dinosaurs, and then rendering them in Maya to get a cleaner image. Although the final product was acceptable, it began to bother me. Not following through with pieces is not a usual occurrence for me. But if I do so happen to stop working at a project, it is usually because I did a rush job in the beginning, and back tracking would not be worth my time. So, in any case, I made sure the models were sculpted properly, with clean UVs and flawless geometry. So if I were to back track and revisit this project, It wouldn't be too time consuming.
I love Maya, for all it can do and all it has taught me, but the rendering portion is very time consuming. Being a 2D illustrator, I enjoy speed when working digitally. So I did a little research on alternate 3D Modeling software, and stumbled upon Modo. I downloaded the trial version, ripped through the basic tutorials, and voila!
The lighting is a bit blown out, and some of the cast shadows are weird, but I like it. So I'm done.
Enjoy!
