5 programs I want to Learn

Here are 5 programs that I want to know a lot more about.

• Modo - a very up and coming program, lots of features
  
• Zbrush - the program that turned modelers into sculptors
  
• Nuke - it seems to be the only high end compositing app out there people care about
  
• Mental Ray - well Autodesk keeps including it with everything
• Final Cut - got to edit all together someplace right?

I would like to start modeling more. I have not really been doing it lately and there have been so many cool advancements recently. I just want to be able to take advantage of it. Modo and Zbrush really seem to be where a lot of development is happening in how you create your cg assets. I could only wish that there was the same amount of enthusiasm put towards rendering programs now.

I'm becoming more obsessed with how the elements that I create are being compsitied together. My friend Bruce Spike who is the main Comopister at Armstrong-White is just great at it. I think we work really well together and we can pass the buck between us. Meaning He knows if something is difficult for me and I know when something is difficult for him and we work around a lot of each others problems. I would like to know more about nuke so I can more easily anticipate his problems and do more compositing of my own. Digital Fusion is another tool out there but there is much more hype around Nuke so I guess I want to see what it's all about.

Ah Mental Ray, well Autodesk keeps putting in all of their products for some reason. I'm a big big fan of Vray, it's just so sweet. But It seems like a lot of people are using this and making some pretty impressive images. Especially in animation and film that seems to be where it really shines. The whole final gather thing seems to be really annoying and I just dont ever want to deal with photons. This one is going to be an up hill battle.