I am starting college programming courses in the fall. I have very little in the way of a programming background. Can anyone tell me what type of programming tools are used to build an application like ZBrush or Maya? I understand ZScripts and Mel scripting but what is used on the front end to create the application? I have downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 from Dreamspark but I have no idea whether this is the right tool. I want to develop 3D apps and I don't want to waste my time this fall learning a program that is designed for web pages or databases. Any suggestions would be awesome!
I think it all the high end programing languages like C/C++, C# etc..
If oyu want to develop your own 3d package you may find interesting looking into source code of opens source packages like Blender, Wings 3d or Arto of Illusion.
There are many others but I can't recall more names.
Their source code is free to download and use. It can give you idea.
There's also Sharpconstruct. Curently developed as a build in part of Blender, but the old program and source is still avalible.
It is sculpting program similar to ZBrush