What about from the software front? Where do you start? What tools do you use?
TL;DRGurmukh models in Maya, renders in KeyShot and finishes in Photoshop, preferring KeyShot over V-Ray because it is fast, intuitive and has built-in materials.
For me, I do most of my design and modeling in Maya, and then I render in KeyShot, and then I finish it up in Photoshop.
You've become a big proponent of KeyShot lately.
Yeah, KeyShot. A couple of us have been taking part in the beta testing for KeyShot 6 and it's really cool. The thing that sold me on it is just it's really easy to use and you don't get headaches from thinking about render settings and hoping your renders turn out nice. It's almost like a real-time render, so you pretty much see what you're gonna get on your screen pretty quick, and really high quality. Super fast. We were using V-Ray previously, and even with V-Ray RT, which is great, it's amazing, but the materials are pretty much already built in there [in KeyShot], it's so intuitive, you can get something out in a day. KeyShot, yeah, it's real easy, and for me, the best part is it keeps me in my artist mode, like design mode. I don't have to worry. Drag and drop materials; I don't have to worry about trying to set up materials and figuring out the settings to make it the right kind of metal or the right kind of glass or whatever. So that's just why I enjoy using it, because it's really easy.