If you're more interested in the physics simulation for research, I can't help ya. However, SideFX Houdini is tough to beat if you're going more for entertainment-focused simulations.
Their free non-commercial "Apprentice" version is only limited in its rendering and collaboration capabilities. It's pretty... uh... deep though. Coming from software and moving into this industry, the workflow for learning these sorts of tools is totally different. Lots of people say Houdini is more like an IDE than a 3D modelling program, and I agree in many ways. Rather than using the visual tools like in, say, blender, it's almost entirely based on creating a network of nodes, and modifying attributes and parameters. You can do most stuff in Python more cleanly than others like 3ds Max, though it won't compile, so the performance is bad in big sims. Their own C-like language, vex, is competent, and there's even a more granular version of their node system for the finer work with more complex math and such. It's almost entirely a data-oriented workflow on the technical side.
However, if you're a "learn by reading the docs" type, you're going to have to learn to love tutorials rather quickly. It's very, very different from any environment or paradigm I've worked with, and the community at large, while generally friendly, suffers from the curse of expertise big-time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxiqA8_CiC4
Their free non-commercial "Apprentice" version is only limited in its rendering and collaboration capabilities. It's pretty... uh... deep though. Coming from software and moving into this industry, the workflow for learning these sorts of tools is totally different. Lots of people say Houdini is more like an IDE than a 3D modelling program, and I agree in many ways. Rather than using the visual tools like in, say, blender, it's almost entirely based on creating a network of nodes, and modifying attributes and parameters. You can do most stuff in Python more cleanly than others like 3ds Max, though it won't compile, so the performance is bad in big sims. Their own C-like language, vex, is competent, and there's even a more granular version of their node system for the finer work with more complex math and such. It's almost entirely a data-oriented workflow on the technical side.
However, if you're a "learn by reading the docs" type, you're going to have to learn to love tutorials rather quickly. It's very, very different from any environment or paradigm I've worked with, and the community at large, while generally friendly, suffers from the curse of expertise big-time.