I understand that there is no direct way of producing surface charts in LO Calc. There are surface chart workaround.ods like this. The existing functions for changing perspective, apperance and illumination are really neat. However, this is not the real thing as features like colorization by value range/elevation are missing.
Are there any other workarounds that I am not aware of yet?
Or is it better to use other software like gnuplot?
Is there enough interest to raise a feature request?
Within the ODF v1.2 specification, 19.15.1, there is a chart:class of chart:surface however the definition appears (to me) to be … tedious, or at least fairly entangled with cell ranges and the 3D setting. The related enhancement to get this implemented is fdo#51670, which contains a good basic example of a surface chart created in Excel that renders in Calc as a set of discreet columns (rather than a homogeneous surface). It is probably also worth noting the various OASIS issues that relate to “surface+chart”.
Quick note: after more than 3 years, I am happily using R and the plot3D package. Works like a charm.