Draw surface of 3D cloud in matlab - matlab

I have 3D cloud of dots. I need to plot them as a surface. I tried variant with meshdrid, griddata, scatteredInterpolant,trisurf-delaunay. Nothing works. I know that this question was discussed a lot, but it seems I don't understand some important details. The code which i have now:
load('coords.mat')
figure()
subplot(1,2,1)
plot3(x,y,z,'.')
axis off
view(3)
subplot(1,2,2)
C=gray(numel(x)); % unsuccessful attempt
[~,idx]=sort(z); % to have
C=C(idx,:); % illumination
scatter3(x,y,z,50,C,'filled')
axis off
view(3)
produces the following image:
Could you help me:
1) to find a way to draw it with surface function.
and as some dots may be inside the surface (may be it is my problem)
2) How to remove 'invisible' dots?
I need solution for different cases, picture and data presents just an example.
Mat file may be downloaded here.
P.S.
In case it is important – I obtain coordinates of this dots as a rotation of random bezier curve.
UPDATE
In case data above is too big I generate another set with smaller amount of dots:
Coordinates are here.

where do you get this data from? It is represented as vectors but if you reshape it to matrices you can use the surf function. Try this code:
z=reshape(z,100,100);
y=reshape(y,100,100);
x=reshape(x,100,100);
surf(x,y,z)

Related

Matlab Polarplot() and surface color

I am a bit struggling with my polar plot. I am playing with strikes and dips, and for each pair of those, an "intensity". I'd like to plot this surface/contourf/whatever function on my polarplot. I cannot find the handle to do so. Dpp2 contains the intensity value for a given theta and rho/ strike and dip.
xTmp = (0:4:360);
yTmp = (0:22.5:90);
[strike,dip]= meshgrid(deg2rad(xTmp),deg2rad(yTmp));
dip2 = rad2deg(dip);
strike2 =rad2deg(strike);
figure('name', 'COLD');
polarplot([0 360],[0 90]);
s = surf(strike2, dip2, DPp2);
polarplot(s);
colormap
I've tried something like that, which obviously doesn't work.
cheers,
Flo
As far as I know there is no way of creating a surface plot directly in a polarplot.
One workaround is to manually create your polar axis plot. You can find an example here.
Another workaround would be to use
polarscatter to create a scatter plot (which looks simmilar in case you have a tight grid) Have a look at this.
Because you mentioned the handle: In case you want a handle to the axes have a look at polaraxes from here.
The polar scatter wasn't working, so I tried another function, which seems to work according to this page: https://fr.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/95796-how-do-i-create-a-contour-plot-in-polar-coordinates
I am note quite there yet, the contour map isn't "wrapped" around my polar plot, but so far it's compiling. If anyone has an idea on how to superimpose the contour map onto the polar plot ?
dip2 = rad2deg(dip);
strike2 =rad2deg(strike);
h = polar([0 360],[0 90]);
hold on;
contourf(strike2,dip2,DPp2);
% Hide the POLAR function data and leave annotations
set(h,'Visible','off')
% Turn off axes and set square aspect ratio
axis off
axis image

Is there a possibility to draw several cylinders or tubes in a matlab figure

I have 3-D plot in matlab and it contain several lines. I want to draw cylinder or hollow tubes around those line. Is someone has experience of plotting several cylinder in 3-D plot?
Yes, there is a possibility. There is a possibility of everything in Matlab!
Lets Google and find: cylinder()!
Fantastic, Matlab has a function to generate cylinders!
And... That's it. Go plot them wherever you want.
Fun:
clear;clc;
cmap = hsv(10);
for ii=1:10
hold on
[X,Y,Z]=cylinder(rand(1,1)*0.4);
h=surf(X+(rand(1,1)-10)*2,Y+(rand(1,1)-10)*2,Z*rand(1,1)*10,'FaceColor',cmap(ii,:));
end

How do I add 2 Y axis to my MATLAB Plot?

I know this question has been asked before - but none of them deal with a 3D plot with 2 Y axis. My question is a continuation of - How do I add a 2D Plot along with a surface or mesh plot in MATLAB? or this.
I have now successfully managed to add a 2D plot along with a surface plot. See image below -
Now my problem is that the range of the 2D plot is so high that the 3D plot is shrunk to look like nothing more than a plane on the ceiling. It is supposed to have variations like the figure in the question I have lined above.
How do I provide a different Y axis for the 2D plot so that the 3D plot is not shrunk like it is here.
It's possible that you can use the DataAspectRatio property to accomplish this. Taking inspiration from the example from the previous post, if we have:
z=peaks(100);
x1=linspace(0,100);
plot3(x1,0*ones(1,numel(x1)),40*sin(x1))
surface(z+40, 'edgecolor', 'none');
and then you can use
set( gca, 'dataaspectratio', [1.25 1.25 .7] )
view( [-37.5 18] )
can work in some cases to help regain some of the range on the surface plot. This method won't work, however, in very extreme cases.

Plot 3D surface that is not the graph of a function

I have a 3D data set of a surface that is not a function graph. The data is just a bunch of points in 3D, and the only thing I could think of was to try scatter3 in Matlab. Surf will not work since the surface is not a function graph.
Using scatter3 gave a not so ideal result since there is no perspective/shading of any sort.
Any thoughts? It does not have to be Matlab, but that is my go-to source for plotting.
To get an idea of the type of surface I have, consider the four images:
The first is a 3D contour plot, the second is a slice in a plane {z = 1.8} of the contour. My goal is to pick up all the red areas. I have a method to do this for each slice {z = k}. This is the 3rd plot, and I like what I see here a lot.
Iterating this over z give will give a surface, which is the 4th plot, which is a bit noisy (though I have ideas to reduce the noise...). If I plot just the black surface using scatter3 without the contour all I get is a black indistinguishable blob, but for every slice I get a smooth curve, and I have noticed that the curves vary pretty smoothly when I adjust z.
Some fine-tuning will give a much better 4th plot, but still, even if I get the 4th plot to have no noise at all, the result using scatter3 will be a black incomprehensible blob when plotted alone and not on top of the 3D contour. I would like to get a nice picture of the full surface that is not plotted on top of the 3D contour plot
In fact, just to compare and show how bad scatter3 is for surfaces, even if you had exact points on a sphere and used scatter3 the result would be a black blob, and wouldn't even look like a sphere
Can POV-Ray handle this? I've never used it...
If you have a triangulation of your points, you could consider using the trisurf function. I have used that before to generate closed surfaces that have no boundary (such as polyhedra and spheres). The downside is that you have to generate a triangulation of your points. This may not be ideal to your needs but it definitely an option.
EDIT: As #High Performance Mark suggests, you could try using delaunay to generate a triangulation in Matlab
just wanted to follow up on this question. A quick nice way to do this in Matlab is the following:
Consider the function d(x, y, z) defined as the minimum distance from (x, y, z) to your data set. Make sure d(x, y, z) is defined on some grid that contains the data set you're trying to plot.
Then use isosurface to plot a (some) countour(s) of d(x, y, z). For me plotting the contour 0.1 of d(x, y ,z) was enough: Matlab will plot a nice looking surface of all points within a distance 0.1 of the data set with good lighting and all.
In povray, a blob object could be used to display a very dense collection of points, if you make them centers of spheres.
http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/71/
If you want to be able to make slices of "space" and have them colored as per your data, then maybe the object pattern (based on a #declared blob object) might do the trick.
Povray also has a way to work with df3 files, which I've never worked with, but this user appears to have done something similar to your visualization.
http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/df3/

plot a set of 3D data in different angles in MATLAB

I have a formula that depends on theta and phi (spherical coordinates 0<=theta<=2*pi and 0<=phi<=pi). By inserting each engle, I obtained a quantity. Now I have a set of data for different angles and I need to plot the surface. My data is a 180*360 matrix, so I am not sure if I can use SURF or MESH or PLOT3. The figure should be a surface that include all data and the axes should be in terms of the quantity, not the quantity versus the angles. How can I plot such a surface?
I see no reason why you cannot use mesh or surf to plot such data. Another option I tend to use is that of density plots. You basically display the dependent variable (quantity) as an image and include the independent variables (angles) along the axis, much like you would with the aforementioned 3D plotting functions. This can be done with imagesc.
Typically you would want your axes to be the dependent variables. Could you elaborate more on this point?
If I understand you correctly you have calculated a function f(theta,phi) and now you want to plot the surface containing all the points with the polar coordinated (r,theta,phi) where r=f(theta,phi).
If this is what you want to do, the 2D version of such a plot is included in MATLAB under the name polar. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, polar3 on MatlabCentral is not the generalization you are looking for.
I have been able to plot a sphere with the following code, using constant r=1. You can give it a try with your function:
phi1=0:1/(3*pi):pi; %# this would be your 180 points
theta1=-pi:1/(3*pi):pi; % your 360 points
r=ones(numel(theta1),numel(phi1));
[phi,theta]=meshgrid(phi1,theta1);
x=r.*sin(theta).*cos(phi);
y=r.*sin(theta).*sin(phi);
z=r.*cos(theta);
tri=delaunay(x(:),y(:),z(:));
trisurf(tri,x,y,z);
From my tests it seems that delaunay also includes a lot of triangles which go through the volume of my sphere, so it seems this is not optimal. So maybe you can have a look at fill3 and construct the triangles it draws itself: as a first approximation, you could have the points [x(n,m) x(n+1,m) x(n,m+1)] combined into one triangle, and [x(n+1,m) x(n+1,m+1) x(n+1,m+1)] into another...?