More colors, ripples in the water, plants or fish, other living things would be good. As to modelers I use Rhino but a warning. Nurbs are Quirky. That's because surfaces are generated from a function. I made a rocket plane and when I added the wings the top of the body flattened and bent up. You have to resist the urge to union complex and intersecting shapes in rhino. Making meshes out of objects and sticking rough edges inside of intersecting meshes will keep your final mesh size down. Iv'e used lots of drafting type programs sutch as claris, vellum, and anvil and more recently autocad and 3d studio max. the basic programs and controls are rigid. You also start out with a basic program that costs about the same as rhino, but if you add the tools like the Mech-E or the architectural tools can run several thousand more. You do have the advantage of rigid mesh constraints though. Haven't tried maya much but everyone who does much film seems to want it. You used to be able to download a version that just ran a demo of the tools and functions through a set of tutorials without saves or other tools. It would at least let you try the interface before you buy. Most of the babylon 5 series was done on lightwave. I remember a demo version of that but the setup room quickly drove me crazy. As with most of the other programs you either like them or hate them. I love Rhino, but I think you should try them all before you lock yourself into a certain mindset.