Well for those who don't use Maya, it's a 3d modeling/animating program that has you build things from the ground up. We use simple shapes and manipulate the edges, faces, and verticies in order to make complicated shapes seen in my other work.

My friend  eliki wanted to know about lighting so here are 4 lighting types along with the 2 main types of rendering. Software which is usually a lower end, and mental ray which is higher quality.

Because this was a quick run-down, I didn't do all that impressive stuff to show the differences in quality but if you want to see the results of Mental Ray look at all my 3D work in my gallery. You'll get the idea.

So yeah here we are :D