How to generate points on the surface of an ellipsoid?

I'm looking for a method or Matlab-function to generate some points (eg. equidistant points) on the surface of a ellipsoid. A good function to do this for a sphere is available by mySphere(N). Are there any idea to solve this problem? Thanks

Answer 1

[Uday Pradhan]

Hi,

I believe you can use the ellipsoid function for this. Example:

[x,y,z] = ellipsoid(0,-0.5,0,6,3.25,3.25);

will create an ellipsoid with centre at (0,-0.5,0) and has semi -axis length (6,3.25,3.25). Now, coming to the points on the surface:

You can utilize the x,y and z variables returned by the function. Basically,

[x(i,j),y(i,j),z(i,j)]  %where 1<= i,j <= 21

is a point on the ellipsoid. The 21 faces restriction can be made finer by using an extra argument for "number of faces". I hope this helps!

[Adam Danz]

I think this generates equidistant points along the longitudes and within each latitude but not between latitudes and the points definitely aren't equidistant.

[x,y,z] = ellipsoid(0,-0.5,0,6,3.25,3.25);
plot3(x,y,z,'o')
grid on
axis equal
view(2)
set(gca,'xtick',-6:6,'ytick',-4:4)