Specifying quiver vector color by density - matlab

Question

I have some vectors with defined position and orientation. I could show them in space by using the below code:
theta = [pi/2,-pi/2,pi/2,pi/2,pi/2,pi/2,pi/2];
r = 0.25; % magnitude (length) of arrow to plot
x = [4,3.5,3.75,4.5,8,10,12]; y = [8.5,8.2,8.3,8,9,10,8];
u = r * cos(theta); % convert polar (theta,r) to cartesian
v = r * sin(theta);
h = quiver(x,y,u,v,'linewidth',2);
set(gca, 'XLim', [2 15], 'YLim', [4 15]);
As is clear from the image, in some regions the number of arrows is more than in other places. I want to show the arrows by color, where each color represents the density of the arrows.
Could anyone help me to do that? It would also be a good solution if there is a continuous background color which shows local densities.

Answer 1

Edit: Below are some options for colouring the background of the plot depending on the density of your points. I'm editing this into the top of my answer because it actually answers your question - individually colouring quiver arrows based on density!
x = rand(200,1)*10; y = rand(200,1)*10; % Set up random points
r = 1; u = r * cos(x); v = r * sin(y); % Quiver directions
colormap winter; c = colormap; % Set colourmap and assign to matrix
% Get density of points broken into a 10x10 grid
[n,~,~,binX,binY] = histcounts2(x,y,[10,10]);
% Get colour based on histogram density and chosen colormap colours
col = c(ceil(n(sub2ind(size(n), binX, binY))/max(n(:))*size(c,1)),:);
figure; hold on;
% Each quiver point must be plotted individually (slow!) because colours can
% only be applied to individual quivers. This could be sped up by plotting
% all of the same colour at once.
for ii = 1:size(x,1);
quiver(x(ii),y(ii),u(ii),v(ii),0,'color',col(ii,:));
end
Output:
Note: unlike the below example, you cannot use hist3 because you need it to return the bin index too. You could try this File Exchange function to achieve the same result (untested).
Here is an option using hist3 to get the density (in this example I use a 10x10 grid, as specified when calling hist3). Then using pcolor to display the density, and shading interp to smooth the colours.
Note: hist3 requires the Stats & ML toolbox, if you have Matlab 2015b or newer you can instead use the standard function histcounts2(x,y).
% Generate points and quiver directions
x = rand(200,1)*10; y = rand(200,1)*10;
u = r * cos(x); v = r * sin(y);
% Get density of points, format for input to pcolor
n = hist3([x,y],[10,10]); % Get density of points broken into a 10x10 grid
colx = linspace(min(x),max(x),size(n,1)+1);
coly = linspace(min(y),max(y),size(n,1)+1);
n = n'; n(size(n,2)+1,size(n,1)+1) = 0;
% Plot
figure
pcolor(colx,coly,n) % Density plot
hold on; colorbar; % Hold on for next plot and show colour bar key
quiver(x,y,u,v,'r') % Quiver plot
shading interp % Smooth plot colours
Output:
Edit: making the colours more muted
You can control the colours using colormap. This could be one of the defaults, or you can create a custom map of RGB triplets and have whatever colours you want! Here is an example, simply calling colormap bone; at the end of the above code:
In a custom colour map, you could make the colours even more muted / less contrasting.
Additionally, you can use caxis to scale the colour axis of a plot! Simply call
caxis([0,2*max(n(:))]);
at the end of the above code to double the maximum colour map value. You can tweak the 2 to get desired results:

Answer 2

this looks way less fancy but specifies the arrow color as function of the number of arrows in a certain number of bins of the x-axis
close all;
cm=colormap;
theta = [pi/2,-pi/2,pi/2,pi/2,pi/2,pi/2,pi/2];
r = 0.25; % magnitude (length) of arrow to plot
x = [4,3.5,3.75,4.5,8,10,12]; y = [8.5,8.2,8.3,8,9,10,8];
[n,c]=hist(x,5); %count arroes in bins
u = r * cos(theta); % convert polar (theta,r) to cartesian
v = r * sin(theta);
figure;hold on
for ii=1:numel(n) %quiver bin by bin
if n(ii)>0
if ii==1
wx=find(x<(c(ii)+(c(ii+1) - c(ii))/2)); %Which X to plot
elseif ii==numel(n)
wx=find(x>c(numel(n)-1));
else
wx=find((x>(c(ii)-(c(ii)-c(ii-1))/2)).*(x<(c(ii+1)-(c(ii+1)-c(ii))/2)));
end
indCol=ceil( (size(cm,1)*n(ii)-0) / max(n));%color propto density of arrows %in this bin
col = cm(indCol,:);%color for this bin
h = quiver(x(wx),y(wx),u(wx),v(wx),0,'linewidth',2,'color',col);
end
end
colorbar
caxis([0 max(n)])