Cool

Maya:

Using MJPolytools for modelling also the split edge ring tool which is pretty similar.

UV Autoratio, this smart plugin creates equal uv spaces on ALL objects, so you dont have to worry about different scales of uvs on a model made up of separated objects, each uv is the same.

TIP OF THE DAY:

It kind of bugged me for a while that in renderman you can apply nodes to a low res object and it comes out real nice at render time, and I thought why cant Mental Ray do that well it can.

Im sure many of you know that when using keyboard 3 it displays your poly mesh nice n smooth in the view port, with the same lo res geo still there, problem is you cant render it nice and smooth without doing a proper mesh smooth and end up with a ton of polys....plus if you have a rigged character thats been mesh smoothed its carrying all that history about too, Well...forget all that crap and read on...As we all know mental ray approximation nodes are more commonly known for their uses with subdividing your mesh at render times for your displacement maps, well do exactly that, just select your low res un smoothed, severly faceted mesh and apply an approximation node and leave it on the default settings...open mental ray and render...done, one nice smooth model! this also counters the fact of not worrying about hi res model and a proxy, just keep it as a proxy so to speak and just render it and let MR deal with the rest.

Onwards...

Zbrush, Photoshop, Terragen(for matte backdrops) and Fusion

Undos and Interactive as Steve has too

Jay