Ok, thanks for the advice so far. Be assured, I am not giving up on this. I'm in my mid 40's and cant afford to go to school. I graduated with scholarships to go to art school way back when but was not able to do so. I rediscovered my love for art when I got turned on to a cheesy program called Doga. From there I searched and downloaded several programs. I ended up buying AC3D. I have become pretty good with it. But it has its limitations and I am always in awe when I see the work that comes from Maya and such. So I decided to try it out on my own. After what I have read from you all so far, I will stick with Maya.

So I took a suggestion and imported one of my models from AC3D into Maya lastnight. I was going to work on lighting. But two of the textures do not render. I thought maybe it was because they were in PNG format while the others were in JPG. I converted the files and imported into Maya again. Still no luck. Any ideas?

BTW, here is a sample of one of my latest works on Deviantart.

sample