Matplotlib: 3D surface plot turn off background but keep axes

Question

I want to do a 3D surface plot that shows axes but does not show the faces that are between the axes. What I found is how to turn off axes as well as the faces using ax.set_axis_off(). Is there any chance to turn off only those faces, or to make them transparent? (In the first picture you can see the faces if you look closely)

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You cannot "turn the panes off", but you can change their color and thereby make them transparent.

ax.xaxis.set_pane_color((1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0))

Complete code:

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

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')
ax.set_xlabel("x"); ax.set_ylabel("y"); ax.set_zlabel("z")

x = np.arange(-5, 5, 0.25)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(x,x)
Z = np.sin(np.sqrt(X**2 + Y**2))

# make the panes transparent
ax.xaxis.set_pane_color((1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0))
ax.yaxis.set_pane_color((1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0))
ax.zaxis.set_pane_color((1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0))
# make the grid lines transparent
ax.xaxis._axinfo["grid"]['color'] =  (1,1,1,0)
ax.yaxis._axinfo["grid"]['color'] =  (1,1,1,0)
ax.zaxis._axinfo["grid"]['color'] =  (1,1,1,0)

surf = ax.plot_surface(X, Y, Z, cmap=plt.cm.coolwarm,
                   linewidth=0, antialiased=False)

fig.colorbar(surf, shrink=0.5, aspect=5)
plt.show()