This is just a trade off, visual languages are better at being explicit but worse at being abstract. When you think about it, that makes sense: a picture requires the commitment of detail that an abstract textual description does not. Incidentally, simply designing a more abstract visual notation is no easy way out of this, because the notation will inevitably resemble text as it becomes more abstract.
Also, most VPLs have some amount of textual language I them. A patch/wire VPL will go text on patch names and port labeling. Scratch, in contrast, is basically graphically edited text with some visual elements. This makes judging the entire visual paradigm even more tricky, because it isn’t homogenous at all.
- Nuke
- Fusion
- Substance Designer
- Houdini
- Blender
- Natron
- Autodesk Smoke
I am a fan of Houdini which gives you the ability to drop into a C-like DSL called Vex if you ever feel like tossing some traditional code instructions into the mix.
