Python - colormap in matplotlib for 3D line plot

Question

I'm trying to draw a 3D line plot with the toolkits mplot3D of matplotlib I have 4 arrays

• tab_C[0] is an array of x-value
• tab_C[1] is an array of y-value
• tab_C[2] is an array of z-value
• tab_t is an array of time-value

I've draw my plot with this:

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

fig1 = plt.figure()
ax = fig1.gca(projection='3d')
ax.plot(tab_C[0], tab_C[1], tab_C[2])

plt.show()

It works but now I want this plot have rainbow coloring based on the time-value. I've searched the web page of matplotlib but there's nothing. Any suggestion on this problem?

Answer 1

You can do it in pure matploblib fashion as Bill shows, but it is more intuitive with Mayavi. Here is a nice example from their documentation:

from mayavi import mlab
n_mer, n_long = 6, 11
dphi = np.pi / 1000.0
phi = np.arange(0.0, 2 * pi + 0.5 * dphi, dphi)
mu = phi * n_mer
x = np.cos(mu) * (1 + np.cos(n_long * mu / n_mer) * 0.5)
y = np.sin(mu) * (1 + np.cos(n_long * mu / n_mer) * 0.5)
z = np.sin(n_long * mu / n_mer) * 0.5
t = np.sin(mu)

mlab.plot3d(x, y, z, t, tube_radius=0.025, colormap='Spectral')

It is just the argument colormap that determines the colormap, and x, y, z, t can be replaced by the particular array that you want.