Thanks for replies.  As stated, looks like it's my best bet for my needs.  I have played around with the demo a bit, added all the online free emitter libraries, but would need to dig into it a bit more to get a better sense of it.

My background has been mainly in 2D, but I tend to think in 3D.  I just need to master the light- luminescence and particles stuff.   I'll leave the heavy duty and often awesome 3D modeling, etc. to others.