Tri-Surface Plot in Python using Matplotlib
A Tri-Surface Plot is a type of surface plot, created by triangulation of compact surfaces of finite number of triangles which cover the whole surface in a manner that each and every point on the surface is in triangle. The intersection of any two triangles results in void or a common edge or vertex. This type of plot is created where the evenly sampled grids are restrictive and inconvenient to plot. Generally Tri-Surface plots are created by calling ax.plot_trisurf() function of matplotlib library. Some of the attributes of the function are listed below:
| Attribute | Parameter |
|---|---|
| X, Y, Z | dataset as 1D array to be plotted |
| colors | color of the surface patches |
| cmap | color map to set the color of surface patches |
| norm | parameter to normalize map values of colors |
| vmin | minimum value of map |
| vamx | maximum value of map |
| shade | attribute to shade the facecolors |
Example 1: Let’s create a basic Tri-Surface plot using the ax.plot_trisurf() function.
Python3
# Import librariesfrom mpl_toolkits import mplot3dimport numpy as npimport matplotlib.pyplot as plt# Creating datasetz = np.linspace(0, 50000, 100)x = np.sin(z)y = np.cos(z)# Creating figurefig = plt.figure(figsize =(14, 9))ax = plt.axes(projection ='3d')# Creating plotax.plot_trisurf(x, y, z, linewidth = 0.2, antialiased = True);# show plotplt.show() |
Output :

Example 2 : For better understanding Let’s take another example.
Python3
# Import librariesfrom mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np # Creating radii and anglesr = np.linspace(0.125, 1.0, 100) a = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 100, endpoint = False) # Repeating all angles for every radius a = np.repeat(a[..., np.newaxis], 100, axis = 1) # Creating datasetx = np.append(0, (r * np.cos(a))) y = np.append(0, (r * np.sin(a))) z = (np.sin(x ** 4) + np.cos(y ** 4)) # Creating figurefig = plt.figure(figsize =(16, 9)) ax = plt.axes(projection ='3d') # Creating color mapmy_cmap = plt.get_cmap('hot') # Creating plottrisurf = ax.plot_trisurf(x, y, z, cmap = my_cmap, linewidth = 0.2, antialiased = True, edgecolor = 'grey') fig.colorbar(trisurf, ax = ax, shrink = 0.5, aspect = 5)ax.set_title('Tri-Surface plot')# Adding labelsax.set_xlabel('X-axis', fontweight ='bold')ax.set_ylabel('Y-axis', fontweight ='bold')ax.set_zlabel('Z-axis', fontweight ='bold') # show plotplt.show() |
Output:



