Played with VTK for a while yesterday, in part inspired by this story. Got all of my old scripts working. Really is a neat library. I continually destroy myself by thinking that I can make a better viz system if I custom write everything, which I never in fact do, which means that I never have any graphics working. VTK gives a very workable set of algorithms and data structures, and if I had used it more often I would have prettier pictures for all of my presentations.
Hopefully will be off to Sequoia for the weekend for a bit of emotional recharging.
etrepum: Thanks for the tip. I'll give this a shot when I sit down with it again.