Soft body dynamics ‘Intelligent’ figures with attributes like height and weight and built in behaviors that are aware of their environment. A 6 foot figure will bend when trying to go through a 5 foot opening. A scripting interface to enable things like Figure.Walk(direction,speed,style) and Figure.Turn(degrees). I read that in the game Assassin’s Creed, a figure knocked off a ledge would attempt to grab on to the closest support to avoid falling – that kind of built in intelligence. See also a visual programming paradigm in MIT’s Scratch project http://scratch.mit.edu/ An extensive library of preset materials – textiles, architectural etc. that can be modified using easy to understand parameters like, wetness for a T-shirt cotton and corresponding cloth presets for textiles e.g. weight, softness etc. A physical sky (ala Kerkythea) set by specifying the latitude, longitude, date and time. IES lights and meshes Easier to use magnet deformers – dForms in DS (sorry) shows it can be done. An alternate/intermediate material interface without nodes, perhaps in the style of Cinema 4D. I know some love nodes but IMO only, they are an impediment to more casual usage. A real time render preview (ala Vue) that shows a small rendered view of the scene – very helpful for lighting etc. A dual interface, bare metal for the techies and wizards, presets etc. for the rest. An intelligent interactive help/troubleshooting system than can suggest/make fixes for common problems like spots on render, etc. Network rendering of still images.

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