3D surface parametric plot: bind colormap to something other than z

📊 Plotly Python
1

When performing a 3D parametric plot with plotly, the surface coloring is always bound to the ‘z’ coordinates. This is often not desirable. A classical example are antenna radiation plots, where the coloring is a function of the radial coordinate r=sqrt(x^2+y^2+z^2). Is it possible to perform a surface plot with plotly binding the colormap to another scalar vector other than the coordinate ‘z’?

Best

Giovanni

2

Did you solve this? I am trying to achieve the same.

3

I’d like to be able to change color of the surface plot to something other than Z coordinate also, but could not figure out a way to do so. The work around I’ve been using is to use a 3D scatter plot instead, where I’ve made a fairly dense field of points that get plotted in 3D, and can be set to whatever color scheme you’d like. Its not a surface, but if the points are dense enough it looks like a surface.

1 Like
4

You can achieve this using the surfacecolor attribute.

See example: https://plot.ly/python/3d-surface-coloring/

5

I’ve read that before, but I still don’t understand how to change my plot. I don’t see what needs to change to change the axis plotting.

My current code for example:

data = [go.Surface(z=surfaceMatrix)]

layout = go.Layout(
    title=args.i,
    autosize=True,
    width=1590,
    height=1000,

    scene=dict(
        aspectratio=dict(x=3, y=1, z=1),
        aspectmode = 'manual',
        yaxis=dict(
            title='Size',
            titlefont=dict(
                family='Arial, sans-serif',
                size=18,
                #color='lightgrey'
            ),
            type='log',
            autorange=True,
        ),
        xaxis=dict(
            title=" Co-ordinates",
            titlefont=dict(
                family='Arial, sans-serif',
                size=31,
                #color='lightgrey'
            ),
            #autorange=False,
            ticks='inside',
            showgrid=True,
            ticktext=["-" + str(args.e),str(boundD['rangeStart'] + args.e), str(boundD['rangeEnd'] - args.e), "+" + str(args.e)],
            tickvals=[0, upstream, (100 - upstream), 100]
        ),
    ),

)
#shapes = buildGeneModel()

fig = go.Figure(data=data, layout=layout)
outname = str(args.i) + "-3Dsurface.html"
plotly.offline.plot(fig, filename=outname)`
6

No need to change the axis properties.

The required change in the surface trace you’re trying to plot.