This is an old, finished composite I worked on for my student demo reel. The orc is rendered in Mental Ray with final gather and hdr. The dragons in the background are also rendered out of Maya. The tower, smoke, light beam, and clouds are all painted. HSV adjustments and compositing work was all done in photoshop. Thanks for checking it out.
Special thanks goes to Aren Voorhees for letting me texture his model. You can see his work at http://www.arenvoorhees.com