Tools I Use Daily in 2025

Every year I audit my tools. Not out of restlessness, but because the landscape changes fast and clinging to familiar workflows can quietly erode your output quality. Here is what I am using daily in 2025 and why each tool earned its place.

The Core Stack

Blender remains the center of gravity. Version 4.2 brought performance improvements that finally make it viable for complex motion graphics without constant compromises. The geometry nodes system has matured enough that I build most of my procedural setups there now, rather than reaching for Houdini.

For compositing and final output, After Effects still has no real competitor for motion design. DaVinci Resolve handles everything color-related. And Figma is where all design thinking begins -- mood boards, style frames, client presentations.

What Changed This Year

The biggest shift was not adding a new tool -- it was removing three. Simplification is underrated.

I dropped Substance Painter in favor of Blender's built-in texture painting plus procedural materials. I stopped using a separate project management app and moved everything into plain Markdown files versioned with Git. And I replaced my complex render farm setup with a single powerful workstation.

# My daily project structure
project-root/
  ├── _brief/          # Client brief, references
  ├── _frames/         # Style frames (Figma exports)
  ├── blend/           # Blender project files
  ├── comp/            # After Effects projects
  ├── export/          # Final renders
  ├── scripts/         # Python automation
  │   ├── batch_render.py
  │   ├── asset_catalog.py
  │   └── version_snapshot.py
  └── notes.md         # Plain text project log

The lesson: every tool you add is a tax on your attention. Every tool you remove is a gift to your focus. Choose deliberately.