Description of arguments in surface plot function in Python

Question

Hi I am writing a code which uses ax.plot_surface() to plot data on a unit sphere for theta = linspace(0,pi,100) and phi = linspace(0,2*pi,100).

For some reason my image is distorted in the sense that the sphere is ahead of the axis. Does anyone have any idea of why this would be the case?

Answer 1

3D plotting isn't necessarily a good place to start learning how to use plotting libraries; the fundamentals are more often explained in simpler 2d plots. But to get started,

• read the 3d tutorial
• use the 3d examples for reference
• experiment! Produce the same figure with different parameter settings.

The specific parameters you asked about:

• linewidth is not relevant for the plot_surface, but does make a big difference in the closely related plot_wireframe. See this example and experiment with the linewidth value. 1 is default.
• alpha refers to transparency, of a graphical element. Any value <1 will mean it is possible to see other lines etc, even directly behind. This example uses alpha=0.3 in 3d
• antialiased controls whether the rendering is done with anti-aliasing or not. It is more expensive to use, but the result is to reduce visual distortions. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/8750463 which also links this explanation of the method.