Why, Why, Why?

It's easy to get caught up in all the features you need to have in 3d graphics, but the truth of the matter is that when creating 3d animation or models, there are not very many tools that are used often. Every software has some sort of bells and whistles to show what you can do in 5 seconds at a trade show, but building and animating is almost always a matter of pulling vertices, moving and rotating. If you can come up with an elegant way of doing these things, you have a very important basis for a software package. Some of the high end 3d tools of today have forgotten that artist spend a lot of time hitting the same buttons over and over again. The easier these few important areas are to navigate, the faster you can get the model or animation done. And everyone wants to go home and sleep at some point. Well, I'm assuming that's true of some people out there.