3D scatter plot

Question

I want to create a 3D scatter plot. There is a fourth parameter which will be indicated by a colour map. I can program in Python and IDL, but was wondering has anybody created such a scatter plot and what is the best tool to use?

Thanks.

Answer 1

There are two main options matplotlib and Mayavi. At the moment matplotlib is more popular, so you will find info easier. Mayavi tends to be more advanced so you would use it if matplotlib is not enough for your use case(for example too slow). An example using matplotlib:

import numpy as np
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
n = 100

xs = np.random.randint(0, 10, size=n)
ys = np.random.randint(0, 10, size=n)
zs = np.random.randint(0, 10, size=n)
colors = np.random.randint(0, 10, size=n)
ax.scatter(xs, ys, zs, c=colors, marker='o')
plt.show()

You can find more examples here.