I'm currently a Concept Artist at Marvel in the film Art Dept., having moved from Architecture / set design and film drafting. Rhino is used quite a bit in the drafting world in set design (I was a big SkUp user because of Architecture) and MoI is a fantastic tool to integrate nurbs into your workflow. If you are looking at Set Design or Props, MoI will be a great way to learn the nurbs/profile mentality and incredibly useful to communicate to scale with Props especially (as they love a nice clean .3dm usually.) I'd then move into a package like Rhino if that was your bag. I would say if you would like to - build - things (to be a film Art Director, say) stick with CAD packages they can take you pretty far. Something's real-world scale is very important...Edon and artists in a similar vein generally have little contact with Construction or Props directly as Concept-ers usually hand off models to the drafting team or Art Directors who rationalise it. Game design, obviously this isn't a concern.

If you are looking to purely concept or illustrate...I'd highly recommend ZBrush for its ability to act across most object topologies and high poly counts. The key factor is being able to work across both organic and inorganic very quickly (ZModeler is an incredible hard surface tool.) I've been through quite a long process trying to marry everything together and have come to MoI and SketchUp for most CAD based solutions (set design, props) ZBrush for illustration/concept. 3DCoat is discussed a lot but ultimately falls short for a few reasons (was a user for several years), one being the slightly buggy tools (just have a browse on the 2021 bug release forums) and the lack of good help/tutorials for new users. I agree the ZBrush UI is very confusing at first, but there are so many great tutorials out there you pick it up quite quickly so it becomes a non-issue.

BTW relax on the age - I got this gig at 37 eep, it's nothing to do with age it's your ability to hang in there (also you'll never be 'good enough' even when you get there!)

- Rich