Plotting four variables u = f(x, y, z) with ranges of x, y, z in Matlab - matlab

Question

I'm trying to plot four variables (x, y, z, u) in a 3D space.
Below I defined u = f(x,y,z) = (x-y)/z and ranges for x, y and z.
Then I used the scatter3 function for plotting.
But the linspace command only returned
u1 = f(x1, y1, z1)
u2 = f(x2, y2, z2)
...
I wanted to plot my variables so that I would get values of u for all x, y and z, so as well as u_i = f(x_i, y_i, z_i), I want:
u112 = f(x1, y1, z2)
u121 = f(x1, y2, z1)
...
Which function do I need to use for this?
Full code:
z = linspace(1,2,50);
y = linspace(0,0.5,50);
x = linspace(-1,1,50);
f = (x-y)./z;
scatter3(x,y,z,5,f,'filled')
for i=1:50
if f(i)<0
scatter3(x,y,z,5,f,'r','filled');
else
scatter3(x,y,z,5,f,'b','filled');
end
end

Answer 1

You need to pass your x, y, and z vectors to meshgrid to have it generate points to fill the whole 3-D volume:
z = linspace(1, 2, 50);
y = linspace(0, 0.5, 50);
x = linspace(-1, 1, 50);
[X, Y, Z] = meshgrid(x, y, z);
f = (X-Y)./Z;
These will be 50-by-50-by-50 matrices. To plot them with scatter3 you will need to reshape them into column vectors using the colon operator:
scatter3(X(:), Y(:), Z(:), 5, f(:), 'filled');
If you'd like to plot negative values of f as red and positive values as blue, you can call scatter3 like so and add a jet colormap (no loops necessary):
scatter3(X(:), Y(:), Z(:), 5, (f(:) < 0), 'filled');
colormap(jet);