Toe dipping with programming....

As a 3d artist and also part time artist making real things, I often feel restricted by the limitations of programmes such as 3ds max to enable more interactivity.

I use 3d Gamestudio A7, with the help of a scripter when needed.
However, I have been looking into Java

and also Actionscript 3 with the free programme http://www.flashdevelop.org/

I also have just found this site- http://processing.org/
'Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production.'

This all seems great and I hope to go through it all. I often wonder why 3d and 2d digital artists are not educated/self educated with scripting/programming.

Fair enough, for mammoth programming tasks you leave it to the pro programers. However, for easier work that would include most interactivity for digital artistic displays, knowing just some code or knowing how to put pre made code blocks together is a great tool for 3d and 2d artists.

After all, architects are usually trained in part of there course with regard to materials/structural loads etc. Even, sculptors, furniture designers etc need to have at least some training and discipline in engineering principles.

When I studied interior design, my favourite architects were the ones who integrated engineering into their works such as Sir Norman Foster or Santiago Calatrava. If I can remember correctly, Calatrava was trained in both architecture and engineering. Which allows him to push structural expression to its limit.

So why not digital artists? Let us go for it, what do we have to lose?