Most Powerful Building Tool?

Hi.

I just want some opinions on the most powerful tool for creating in world content, out of world.

Maya, Blender etc.

Thanks.

The most powerful tool? Your brain.

It sounds like you are looking for information on 3D applications. Unfortunately that's such a broad category that there's no simple answer to the question which is the most powerful. Maya and Blender have "power" to create Second Life content in the same way that a F-22 has power to get you to the grocery store - more than enough. Of course you have to pay over $1,000 for Maya while Blender is free. If you have specific questions please ask them, as you will get more specific answers.

Both Blender and Maya have steep learning curves but I suspect that only expertise in Maya would give you the option of having a skill that you can use to RL work.

If I am going to put in the time to learn a program, I would rather learn one that expands my possibilities in SL and in RL.

Also depends on what kind of content you want to create.... Animations are best done in something like Poser (although QAvimator will get your feet wet and has a less steep learning curve.) Clothing and textures are likely better done in Photoshop (although you can get your feet wet in several free and low-cost programs.)

http://www.promotionstudios.com/?p=326 is just the most recent in a long line of commercials that used Blender in the production pipeline.

With a long list of commercials, a few completed short movies, a fully animated feature length movie, and a few movies in production using Blender for SFX, can we lay the myth about there being no RL work for Blender to rest?

Besides for some of us, SL is our RL work, so it's an artificial divide to begin with

there is
Prim Docker
Virtual Builder
Builder Buddy
and other various in-world tools that work impressively well.