This tutorial explains the process of making a giraffe in Maya. The same principle can also be used in any other 3d application.
The workflow can be described in following steps:
1. Modeling a low-poly cage in Maya.
2. Make UV in Maya.
3. Export the low-poly cage to ZBrush for sculpting.
4. Use photoshop to create general pattern for Giraffe's skin.
5. Use Bodypaint to paint the texture so the patterns can be placed in the right place and avoiding texture stretching.
This tutorial does not include all the details of using a particular tool or program like Bodypaint. Otherwise the tutorial will be too long. The purpose is to show you the workflow that I use to model a Giraffe. Like accomplishing anything else in 3D, there are multiple ways to get the same result. Therefore, it by no means the best process available. But, at least it is a way to do it :-)
1. The first step is always: find good reference. There is no substitue to good reference materials. It could be a drawing or a photo. I googled a image with a side view of a giraffe, it gives me good proportion of the animal. I imported into Maya as an image plane.
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2. Create a poly cube, start extruding according to the reference. Of course, you will not follow exactly to the reference because it is not a perfect side view. You will need to judge by your heart on how much to extrude and scale. Do it in the perspective view so you have a good idea on how the proportion goes.
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Continue to extrude and scale. The next two pictures show the legs are extruded. Also you only need to model half of the body, you can always combine them later on.
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The following pictures show the finished low-poly cage. It is quite boxy looking right now. 
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3. To smooth the poly mesh out and add more details, convert the poly mesh to subdivision surface. By doing that, you have the ability to switch from Subd mode to Poly mode and use Polygon tools to continue sculpt the mesh and view the smoothed result at the same time. 
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4. Once I was satisfied with the main body, the head can be seperated from the mesh and I start working on the head. You can leave the head attached with the body and sculpt details on the head. But I prefer to edit the head alone. It gives more freedom when you add details to it. 
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5. Once head is finished, I attach it back to the main body. And combine the mesh together.
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6. Once the low-poly model is finished, layout UVs in maya. I start with a planar mapping on the side view. Then go into to Edge mode, and select the edges to seperate the entire UVs into pieces.
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7. Once you have a clean UV with the low-poly mesh. Export as a .obj file. And open up ZBrush for sculpting. The following shows the high-rez (half million polygons) version of the giraffe model.
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8. Once you get the high-res model. You can use the technique I described in my other tutorial "Use Maya8.5 Transfer Maps Feature to Generate Normal Maps". You can create the normal map which can be applied to the low-poly mesh and at the render time all the details you get from sculpting in ZBrush will be displayed.
9. Next I went for texturing the Giraffe. According to the reference, the Giraffe has a specific pattern for their skins. You can get the pattern showed below from applying a Liqufied filter in Photoshop on a simple pattern. Fill in the color and you are done.
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10. It is pretty hard to guess in 2D program like Photoshop on where to place the pattern and avoiding the texture stretching at the same time. So I used a 3d texturing program Bodypaint. It has all the tools you got in Photoshop, the difference is that you are painting directly on to the 3D Mesh. I will not touch on Bodypaint here because it will need another 10 pages to cover the basic.
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Here is the final texture map.
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Below is the screenshots I made:
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UVs and texture map assigned:
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Obviously, you can do much more with this model. I haven't got time to add fur to this model's back and the texture looks cartoony. But I think for the purpose of this tutorial, it satisfied the requirements. Enjoy!
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