If you'd like to do 3D modeling with actual vim, you can do it in the venerable raytracer POVRAY: http://www.f-lohmueller.de/pov_tut/basic/povtuto3.htm
Blender's used in actual production, which means lots of tiny things that people doing production work might like to have, have been implemented there.
If one wants to code ones graphics then Blender can serve that need just fine - it has an extensive Python API. Leanrning which will serve one much better than learning the obscure POVRAY script.
Don't guide beginners to POVRAY, please. It will only hurt them in the end. This is just from an ecological perspective.
Besides, it's not like the parent post mentioned anything about beginners, just how to do stuff with vim, which matches the title of the article
For learning computer graphics programming through ray tracing something like Peter Shirleys "Raytracing in one weekend" and then onwards to Pharr, Jakob and Humphreys "Physically based rendering" would be a much better learning path. OpenGL and real time graphics are another beast entirely and to learn those well you must preferably work in the industry for a while (mainly because it's a fairly deep topic and you need professional level enthusiasm to progress much).
For hobbyist programmers Unity is a much better platform to get familiar with real time rendering than just taking the Red Book. I tried the Red Book route long time ago without much other domain understanding of computer graphics - not really the best way to move forward.
And yeah, I was familiar wirh Povray at that point and frankly - that knowledge did not help me much.