ZBrush is a great iteration story. The first versions were for "painting with depth" and when they realized the value in their tools for painting on models, they developed, iteration by iteration, modeling, sculpting, texturing, etc. The legacy of that iteration can be painful in points (dropping tool to canvas is only one such example :-)
As for the math: yeah, tell me about it. I do a lot of 3D game work. I've become quite comfortable with transforms, most quaternion stuff, and boat loads of vector math. However, it took me many, many years to get it down! And I don't really enjoy it that much. I find it tedious and frustrating when all I really want to do is work on the game play logic. That's why I'm not volunteering to disrupt this particular industry...
As for the math: yeah, tell me about it. I do a lot of 3D game work. I've become quite comfortable with transforms, most quaternion stuff, and boat loads of vector math. However, it took me many, many years to get it down! And I don't really enjoy it that much. I find it tedious and frustrating when all I really want to do is work on the game play logic. That's why I'm not volunteering to disrupt this particular industry...