Plotting 3-tuple data points in a surface / contour plot using matplotlib

Question

I have some surface data that is generated by an external program as XYZ values. I want to create the following graphs, using matplotlib:

• Surface plot
• Contour plot
• Contour plot overlayed with a surface plot

I have looked at several examples for plotting surfaces and contours in matplotlib - however, the Z values seems to be a function of X and Y i.e. Y ~ f(X,Y).

I assume that I will somehow need to transform my Y variables, but I have not seen any example yet, that shows how to do this.

So, my question is this: given a set of (X,Y,Z) points, how may I generate Surface and contour plots from that data?

BTW, just to clarify, I do NOT want to create scatter plots. Also although I mentioned matplotlib in the title, I am not averse to using rpy(2), if that will allow me to create these charts.

Answer 1

for do a contour plot you need interpolate your data to a regular grid http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/Gridding_irregularly_spaced_data

a quick example:

>>> xi = linspace(min(X), max(X))
>>> yi = linspace(min(Y), max(Y))
>>> zi = griddata(X, Y, Z, xi, yi)
>>> contour(xi, yi, zi)

for the surface http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/mplot3d/surface3d_demo.html

>>> from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
>>> fig = figure()
>>> ax = Axes3D(fig)
>>> xim, yim = meshgrid(xi, yi)
>>> ax.plot_surface(xim, yim, zi)
>>> show()

>>> help(meshgrid(x, y))
    Return coordinate matrices from two coordinate vectors.
    [...]
    Examples
    --------
    >>> X, Y = np.meshgrid([1,2,3], [4,5,6,7])
    >>> X
    array([[1, 2, 3],
           [1, 2, 3],
           [1, 2, 3],
           [1, 2, 3]])
    >>> Y
    array([[4, 4, 4],
           [5, 5, 5],
           [6, 6, 6],
           [7, 7, 7]])

contour in 3D http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/mplot3d/contour3d_demo.html

>>> fig = figure()
>>> ax = Axes3D(fig)
>>> ax.contour(xi, yi, zi) # ax.contourf for filled contours
>>> show()