For my day job, I do a bit of work involving mathematical functions and
concepts. Often, I'll want to illustrate these things (for talks, classes,
publications, etc.). Here is an example of something I created for a talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ACICctjqw

This was done using Matlab, a numerical computing environment. It's well suited
to scientific computations, but basically, I want to start learning how to use
actual 3d modeling and ray tracing software to generate something more akin to
this:

http://www.subblue.com/assets/0000/4491/Shading_full.jpg
(From www.subblue.com)

Basically, I'm not sure what software or renderer I should start learning.

Although I can't anticipate all my needs, I can say that at least initially, my
main goal is to simply illustrate three-dimensional surfaces which are generated
in matrix form (meaning x,y,z coordinates provided). I'm sure my needs will
evolve, but let's leave it at that.

Here are my needs:
[*]Simple scenes (a plain backdrop for instance)
[*]The kind of ray-traced pictures I've shown above
[*]Simple coding environment
[*]Good documentation
[*]OSX support


I've given POV-Ray a try, though I'm a bit unhappy by the results (I'm not sure
whether this is my own abilities or simply that the software is quite old and
not as slick...?). I've heard of Sunflow (no longer supported), Luxrender, and
Yafaray.

I've also given Blender a try, and while its interesting, I just don't think I
need a full GUI environment. Like I said, right now, all I want is something
that I can read in an imported text file from Matlab containing data for the
surface, put it into a simple scene, and adjust textures and lighting, and come
out with something beautiful.

I'm sure some of you will say that amazing results can be made with the right
user on any kind of software...but since my needs are quite limited (and since
this is not really my day job), I just want to know the easiest one to learn for
illustrating simple surfaces.

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