Povray is a whole different thing, and it's real strength is in rendering. It has a bunch of features that I will never use, radiosity, atmospheres and such. Sort of like using Photoshop to remove redeye... that's where I'm at.
The reason I use it is that you can script movement and such right into the scene using geometry and math, then walk away while it renders your series of images. There are probably better solutions now, but I've used it for about 12 years and I'm kinda used to it.
The script will be familiar to you beyond the actual objects, if/then/else etc. etc.
If you load up some of the "Basic scenes" and render them you can see most of it, although they do throw in all the options even when not used and make a unreadable mess of some of it.