Depends. I'm not expecting 3D artists to write a lot of Python (though it wouldn't hurt them at all). But what makes Emacs and Vim so powerful actually does translate pretty well to other domains (like 3D - hence, Blender). We're talking about efficient workflow. Something that makes the learning curve steeper in exchange of giving you a set of operations you can execute as quickly as humanly possible, and mix and mash together just the way you like. The end result is, after going through the learning (which is exactly the point at which people give up and go complaining), you end up thinking in the tool and focusing your mind on what you want to create instead of fighting the UI.

Unwillingness to learn is the real problem here, and it's mostly a psychological one. It's not about Open Source. I'd never recommend Emacs to Java developers because there are better tools for this niche, but I've seen the overwhelming resistance about e.g. switching to IntelliJ because "Eclipse is good enough", that's only overcome when a socially popular cow-orker does the switch and shows all the cool stuff he's now doing. It's silly to watch how the same people who so strongly complained about unnecessary learning suddenly find the time and will to do that learning, just to do the same thing the popular friend did.

So I guess the way to make powerful tools more popular is to make learning sexy (and expected!) again. Which is something the current web and mobile industry is definitely not helping with. :/.