Adding letters to 3D plot data points in Matlab - matlab

Question

I am currently working on a 3D representation of a hand fingers moving. You can see on the picture below how it looks like, since it would be too complicated to describe otherwise:
It is an animation, so it's moving constantly. There is one dot for each finger, and one dot for the palm. However, I can't keep track of the fingers. I tried to give them different colors, but it doesn't help a lot.
So the question is:
Is there a way to replace the circles, or any other symbol, with an actual letter, or even short word (3-4 letters)?
Alternatively (and it is quite a stretch, but why not ask?), would there be a way to draw lines joining these dots together? This is optional, and I might open another question regarding it if necessary.
Thanks!
Here is the actual code; I know it is far from being elegant coding, and am sorry about it, but it works, which is already a great step for me:
clear all
clc
csv=csvread('pilot6/maindroite.csv',1,0); %read the values from a csv
both = csv(:,2:19);
ax=axes;
set(ax,'NextPlot','replacechildren');
Dt=0.1; %sampling period in secs
k=1;
hp1=plot3(both(k,1),both(k,2),both(k,3),'ok'); %get handle to dot object
hold on;
hp2=plot3(both(k,4),both(k,5),both(k,6),'og');
hp3=plot3(both(k,7),both(k,8),both(k,9),'ob');
hp4=plot3(both(k,10),both(k,11),both(k,12),'oc');
hp5=plot3(both(k,13),both(k,14),both(k,15),'om');
hp6=plot3(both(k,16),both(k,17),both(k,18),'or');
hold off;
t1=timer('TimerFcn','k=doPlot(hp1,hp2,hp3,hp4,hp5,hp6,both,t1,k)','Period', Dt,'ExecutionMode','fixedRate');
start(t1);
and the function used:
function k=doPlot(hp1,hp2,hp3,hp4,hp5,hp6,pos,t1,k)
k=k+1;
if k<5000%length(pos)
set(hp1,'XData',pos(k,1),'YData',pos(k,2),'ZData',pos(k,3));
axis([0 255 0 255 0 255]);
set(hp2,'XData',pos(k,4),'YData',pos(k,5),'ZData',pos(k,6));
set(hp3,'XData',pos(k,7),'YData',pos(k,8),'ZData',pos(k,9));
set(hp4,'XData',pos(k,10),'YData',pos(k,11),'ZData',pos(k,12));
set(hp5,'XData',pos(k,13),'YData',pos(k,14),'ZData',pos(k,15));
set(hp6,'XData',pos(k,16),'YData',pos(k,17),'ZData',pos(k,18));
else
k=1;
set(hp,'XData',pos(k,1),'YData',pos(k,2),'ZData',pos(k,3));
axis([0 255 0 255 0 255]);
end
I just want to mention this is based heavily on Jorge's answer on this question, so thanks to him again

Answer 1

text(x,y,z,'string') instead of plot3 should work in changing the points to text where [x,y,z] is the coordinate of each point you are plotting.
Note: calls to set will need to change from set(hp3,'XData',x,'YData',y,'ZData',z) to set(htext,'pos',[x,y,z]). Where hp3 is the handle to a plot3-handle object and htext is a handle to a text-handle object.
To connect the points with a line use plot3(X,Y,Z) where X=[x_1,x_2,...,x_n], Y=[y_1,y_2,...,y_n] and Z=[z_1,z_2,...,z_n].