MATLAB Central Newsreader - 3d plots of lines and points hard to read

3d plots of lines and points hard to read

David Doria — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:07:01 -0400

Is there a way to get a bit of "depth perception" in matlab? ie if i plot some primitives like lines and points, I can't really tell where they are unless I rotate the plot around for a while. Is there something like shadows or something that can be turned on to give at least some sense of depth instead of just green pixels on a white background, which are very ambiguous?

Anyone have a good way to do this?

Thanks,
Dave

Re: 3d plots of lines and points hard to read

Walter Roberson — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:09:57 -0400

David Doria wrote:
> Is there a way to get a bit of "depth perception" in matlab? ie if i plot some primitives
> like lines and points,

Lighting only applies to surface and patch objects, not to lines and points. You could
try the hack of replacing your lines and points with patch objects that retrace back
on themselves to be infinitely thin; I wouldn't be especially hopeful about that approach
though.

> I can't really tell where they are unless I rotate the plot around for a while.
> Is there something like shadows or something that can be turned on to give at least
> some sense of depth instead of just green pixels on a white background, which are very ambiguous?

You should be able to set a 3D plot to have perspective by changing the axes Camera*
properties (I think)... but sometimes that just isn't enough.

You can't do colour interpolation on any one line or lineseries object; you either use
patches (as mentioned above) or you break your line or lineseries object up into
segments and colour the segments.

Re: 3d plots of lines and points hard to read

Wolfgang Schwanghart — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:13:02 -0400

You might find this useful
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=21116&objectType=file

Another way to get an impression of depth may be using stem3

Best,
Wolfgang

Walter Roberson <roberson@hushmail.com> wrote in message <Pu9Ik.1875$eB2.209@newsfe19.iad>...
> David Doria wrote:
> > Is there a way to get a bit of "depth perception" in matlab? ie if i plot some primitives
> > like lines and points,
>
> Lighting only applies to surface and patch objects, not to lines and points. You could
> try the hack of replacing your lines and points with patch objects that retrace back
> on themselves to be infinitely thin; I wouldn't be especially hopeful about that approach
> though.
>
> > I can't really tell where they are unless I rotate the plot around for a while.
> > Is there something like shadows or something that can be turned on to give at least
> > some sense of depth instead of just green pixels on a white background, which are very ambiguous?
>
> You should be able to set a 3D plot to have perspective by changing the axes Camera*
> properties (I think)... but sometimes that just isn't enough.
>
> You can't do colour interpolation on any one line or lineseries object; you either use
> patches (as mentioned above) or you break your line or lineseries object up into
> segments and colour the segments.