I am interested in using algorithmic techniques to create 3d models which I can then export in a standard format for rapid prototyping. STL, PLY, VRML formats in particular. I am open as to what language to use, Python, Java, C++ - I am flexible as long as the resources are open source or very inexpensive. What libraries/languages would be best for doing this work? Any pointers towards resources would be useful.
I have already experimented with Processing + ModelBuilder but Processing seems to have some low-level 3d bugs regarding handedness which make this task very difficult.
OpenSCAD is a great tool for this with a really nice, simple IDE for displaying your objects and many useful output formats including STL.
OpenSCAD is, however, a domain-specific language and thus has some limitations. You don't have the power of a full, general purpose programming language. The language with the best 3D-modeling library that I have found is Haskell. The package is called ImplicitCAD which has a web-base demo for their DSL which is very similar to OpenSCAD but there is also a Haskell library that is used to implement the DSL which you can use directly.