It is important to understand how Blender treats work modes and selections.
In Cinema4d, for example, when the user selects a camera, the camera settings are displayed in the properties panel. Same for lights, objects, and so on. Same in Lightwave (although Lightwave Layout does not display a panel by default). Houdini's behaviour is slightly different (see below).
In Blender selecting a camera or a light may NOT display its properties initially, unless the user switches to a different mode by clicking on the green tags in the Outliner.
After activating this mode, Blender responds the same as other apps.
It is subtle, and can be confusing to new users or even to experienced users.
In v3 it seems the default mode is to display the appropriate object properties instead of the transformation properties. But once the user clicks the orange icons in the Outliner any subsequent click on any object in the viewport displays the transformation properties.
Now, this behaviour might seem illogical, until it is realized that animating consists of two different things: transformations and object properties. If the user needs to focus on transformation (movement, scaling, rotation, etc.) they work in "orange icon"mode. This ensures that when the user selects a different object, the transformation properties are shown at all times.
If, however, the user needs to focus on animating object properties, they switch to "green icon" mode. Selecting a light, a camera, or an object in the viewport then displays the object properties.
It becomes predictable behaviour, but many Blender users never bother to understand WHY it was designed that way.
And if both transformation and object properties must be accessible simultaneously, pull up the viewport sidebar which will display the transformation properties at all time, while ensuring to work in "green icon" mode.
It is also possible to select either mode of an object by clicking the orange icon or the green icon.
In Houdini the developers decide for the user which mode is preferred initially. When a light is selected, the light properties are displayed. When a camera is selected, it displays the transformation properties instead - I assume the devs presume that the camera will be animated rather than its properties adjusted initially? When the user switches to the camera's render tab, the next time that camera is selected it still displays the render settings.
One could argue that Blender's workflow is more flexible and controllable, and requires less clicks and tabbing compared to Houdini and Layout. (Layout's non-scalable property windows are really problematic, btw: too many tabs with unreadable labels, and the properties are too tightly spaced in general.)
Cinema4D's behaviour is much the same as Houdini, but smarter: like Blender, if the user switched to transformation context in one of the objects, all objects switch to that context automatically. So switch to transformation properties for one light, select the camera in the scene, and that context is also transformation. What is nice about C4D is that multiple tabs may be open simultaneously in the properties, and transformation and object parameters are then accessible together. When clicking another object, this context is retained.
As for LightWave camera manipulation compared to other DCCs: I find camera manipulation still a chore in Layout. In Blender, Houdini, C4D, Max, etc. it all works pretty much the same - not so in Layout. But I understand many users coming from LightWave find it the bee's knees. Myself, I prefer how it is done in other apps.
I prefer how it works in Blender and Cinema4D. After some struggling with Houdini, I find it's alright, but still better than Layout (let's not mention Modeler).
Just those tiny little navigation buttons at the top drive me away from Layout's viewports (I use a Wacom often). And on my screens the GUI font is just too small. And having Eevee quality or real-time Cycles render viewports is such a quality-of-life enhancer, compared to Layout's aged OpenGL viewports I can but shake my head at it and think "yeah, that's how it used to be". Which is a shame, because I recall LightWave being a frontrunner with VPR.
Not only LightWave, though: Houdini is rather the same and I am missing those nice Blender viewports. The Karma renderer is slow and it is not possible to assign it to a viewport (what would be the point anyway). Houdini 17 seems to have made some strides, including a beta version of a GPU accelerated render viewport. Looking forward to that for lookdev. I am planning to try Redshift with Houdini next. karma is SO slow...
Back on thread (track): I am now 52, and learning new exciting things in 3D. Houdini was initially VERY frustrating, but I am warming up to it now. It needed a conceptual paradigm shift in my brain matter for that to happen, but still quite exciting. Some things are just mind-blowingly cool in Houdini (landscape generation, simulations...)
Two weeks ago I finally got my hands on a sparkly new 3080TI, and GPU rendering has never been so much fun. I recall doing wire renders of animated spaceships on our Amiga 1000 that would take hours to complete, let alone full raytraced images
Never to old to learn. My dad taught himself computers at 75, and continued to learn till his passing away at 95. He was scanning, drawing, and designing books of his life on Windows till 94 and his body started to give out, unfortunately.
I intend to continue learning and doing new things beyond my centennial
Hopefully we'll have some age rejuvenation techniques figured out by then. And grown up as a race to stop harming the environment and ourselves. Not betting on that, though.
Still got 50 years ahead of me (with some luck). Whoohoo!
