Python:Curved surface plot with density colors

Question

I have irregularly spaced mesh points data in the form [[xi1,yi1,zi1], [xi2,yi2,zi2],....]. They form a part of a sphere

I also have data [[x1,y1,z1,n1],[x2,y2,z2,n2]....] where (x1,y1,z1) etc tells the coordinate of the midpoint of each mesh bin and ni are the densities at the corresponding locations. The 3d scatter plot with square markers of the data look like this (where the colors show the value of n)

its side view showing the curvature

I am trying to make this into a smooth surface plot. I have looked into this example matplotlib color but here the gridpoints are equally spaced while in my case they are not, also how would one represent the densities using color in such an irregular grid. I am open to trying other packages other than matplotlib.

Thanks

fjarri fjarri · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-02T02:11:49

One method is to manually create and plot a collection of triangles:

(Edit: manually creating and coloring triangles around bin midpoints)

import numpy

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
from matplotlib.tri import Triangulation
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.art3d import Poly3DCollection
import matplotlib.cm as cm

# Generate a dataset

R = 1

# bin midpoints
theta = numpy.linspace(numpy.pi/6, numpy.pi/3, 20) + numpy.pi / 2
phi = numpy.linspace(numpy.pi/6, numpy.pi/3, 20)

ttheta, pphi = numpy.meshgrid(theta, phi)
x = R * numpy.sin(ttheta) * numpy.cos(pphi)
y = R * numpy.sin(ttheta) * numpy.sin(pphi)
z = R * numpy.cos(ttheta)

n = numpy.exp(-(ttheta - numpy.pi/4 - numpy.pi/2)**2 * 20 - (pphi - numpy.pi/4)**2 * 20)

mappable = cm.ScalarMappable(cmap=cm.coolwarm, norm=matplotlib.colors.Normalize(vmin=0, vmax=1))
colors = mappable.to_rgba(n)

# Scatter plot

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1, projection='3d')
ax.scatter(x.flatten(), y.flatten(), z.flatten(), c=colors.reshape(x.size, 4))
ax.set_xlim(0.2, 0.8)
ax.set_ylim(0.2, 0.8)
ax.set_zlim(-0.9, -0.45)
ax.elev = 50
fig.savefig('t.png')

# Surface plot

# bin vertex spherical coordinates
dtheta = theta[1] - theta[0]
dphi = phi[1] - phi[0]
v_theta = numpy.concatenate([theta - dtheta/2, numpy.array([theta[-1] + dtheta/2])])
v_phi = numpy.concatenate([phi - dphi/2, numpy.array([phi[-1] + dphi/2])])

# bin vertex Cartesian coordinates
v_ttheta, v_pphi = numpy.meshgrid(v_theta, v_phi)
vx = R * numpy.sin(v_ttheta) * numpy.cos(v_pphi)
vy = R * numpy.sin(v_ttheta) * numpy.sin(v_pphi)
vz = R * numpy.cos(v_ttheta)

# Creating triangles and corresponding face colors

triangles = []
facecolors = []

for i in range(v_theta.size - 1):
    for j in range(v_phi.size - 1):
        triangles.extend([
            [(i, j), (i + 1, j), (i, j + 1)],
            [(i + 1, j), (i + 1, j + 1), (i, j + 1)]])
        facecolors.extend([
            colors[i, j],
            colors[i, j]
            ])

triangle_vertices = numpy.array(
    [[[vx[i,j], vy[i,j], vz[i,j]] for i, j in t] for t in triangles])
coll = Poly3DCollection(triangle_vertices, facecolors=facecolors, edgecolors=(0,0,0,0))

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1, projection='3d')
ax.add_collection(coll)
ax.set_xlim(0.2, 0.8)
ax.set_ylim(0.2, 0.8)
ax.set_zlim(-0.9, -0.45)
ax.elev = 50
fig.savefig('t2.png')

The scatter plot:

The surface plot:

Python:Curved surface plot with density colors

1 Answers