Languages, languages

I tend to get calls for elemental effects so I've been trying out a ton of languages/aps to find something for that kind of work. Plus I'm looking for something that has a richer scripting environment that AE.

Some results of my experimenting and research so far....

Maya-Essentially, a program without an interface, just a bunch of dialogs connected to an engine. Great dynamics and effects but everything is 3x harder than it needs to be.

Cinema 4D-easy to use, nice, but restrictive academic licensing and dynamics modules are extra.

3D Studio Max-this looks great, but is Windows only. Might try running this on my Intel machine.

Motion--some nice, simple dynamics, but overall, more like a toy.

Quartz Composer--I love the node-based real-time interface, but it needs just a big more refinement in terms of the quality of output.

Nodebox 2-Output is a little too sparse.

Processing-You can do some nice stuff with this. Dynamics requires linking libraries. Still thinking about this one.

Lightwave-capable, but weird interface + a dongle!

Strata--seems unchanged since I used it 20 years ago.

Blender-Highly capable but where is that interface from? Still, highly capable dynamics. Still thinking about this one.

RevMedia with Derbrill plug-in-I love hypertalk, but a bit too sparse.

Scratch

Alice

Various flavors Logo

contextfreeart.org

Unity game engine

dim3 game engine

panda3d