Lot of talk in this thread about Modo and Lightwave.  For those that do not know ...

Luxology Modo Founders were key people at Newtek working on Lightwave.  They left Newtek and Lightwave development when Lightwave was seeing darker days (still is in most sence).

Here is a page from Luxoology home page about the Founders of Luxology:

http://www.luxology.com/company/founders.aspx

My great art tool is still pen and paper, it renders much quicker for me.