Specify absolute colour for 3D points in MayaVi

Question

I am using the MayaVi Python library to plot 3d points, using the points3d class. The documentation specifies that the colour of each point is specified through a fourth argument, s:

In addition, you can pass a fourth array s of the same shape as x, y, and z giving an associated scalar value for each point, or a function f(x, y, z) returning the scalar value. This scalar value can be used to modulate the color and the size of the points.

This specifies a scalar value for each point, which maps the point to a colourmap, such as copper, jet or hsv. E.g. from their documentation:

import numpy
from mayavi.mlab import *

def test_points3d():
    t = numpy.linspace(0, 4*numpy.pi, 20)
    cos = numpy.cos
    sin = numpy.sin

    x = sin(2*t)
    y = cos(t)
    z = cos(2*t)
    s = 2+sin(t)

    return points3d(x, y, z, s, colormap="copper", scale_factor=.25)

Gives:

Instead, I would like to specify the actual value for each point as an (r, g, b) tuple. Is this possible in MayaVi? I have tried replacing the s with an array of tuples, but an error is thrown.

Answer 1

After struggling with this for most of today, I found a relatively simple way to do exactly what the question asks -- specify an RGB tuple for each point. The trick is just to define a color map with exactly the same number of entries as there are points to plot, and then set the argument to be a list of indices:

# Imports
import numpy as np
from mayavi.mlab import quiver3d, draw

# Primitives
N = 200 # Number of points
ones = np.ones(N)
scalars = np.arange(N) # Key point: set an integer for each point

# Define color table (including alpha), which must be uint8 and [0,255]
colors = (np.random.random((N, 4))*255).astype(np.uint8)
colors[:,-1] = 255 # No transparency

# Define coordinates and points
x, y, z = colors[:,0], colors[:,1], colors[:,2] # Assign x, y, z values to match color
pts = quiver3d(x, y, z, ones, ones, ones, scalars=scalars, mode='sphere') # Create points
pts.glyph.color_mode = 'color_by_scalar' # Color by scalar

# Set look-up table and redraw
pts.module_manager.scalar_lut_manager.lut.table = colors
draw()

Answer 2

I've found a better way to set the colors directly.

You can create your own direct LUT pretty easily. Let's say we want 256**3 granularity:

#create direct grid as 256**3 x 4 array 
def create_8bit_rgb_lut():
    xl = numpy.mgrid[0:256, 0:256, 0:256]
    lut = numpy.vstack((xl[0].reshape(1, 256**3),
                        xl[1].reshape(1, 256**3),
                        xl[2].reshape(1, 256**3),
                        255 * numpy.ones((1, 256**3)))).T
    return lut.astype('int32')

# indexing function to above grid
def rgb_2_scalar_idx(r, g, b):
    return 256**2 *r + 256 * g + b

#N x 3 colors. <This is where you are storing your custom colors in RGB>
colors = numpy.array([_.color for _ in points])

#N scalars
scalars = numpy.zeros((colors.shape[0],))

for (kp_idx, kp_c) in enumerate(colors):
    scalars[kp_idx] = rgb_2_scalar_idx(kp_c[0], kp_c[1], kp_c[2])

rgb_lut = create_8bit_rgb_lut()

points_mlab = mayavi.mlab.points3d(x, y, z, scalars, mode='point')

#magic to modify lookup table 
points_mlab.module_manager.scalar_lut_manager.lut._vtk_obj.SetTableRange(0, rgb_lut.shape[0])
points_mlab.module_manager.scalar_lut_manager.lut.number_of_colors = rgb_lut.shape[0]
points_mlab.module_manager.scalar_lut_manager.lut.table = rgb_lut

Answer 3

You can use a rgb look up table and map your rgb values to it using whatever logic you want. Here's a simple example:

import numpy, random
from mayavi.mlab import *

def cMap(x,y,z):
    #whatever logic you want for colors
    return [random.random() for i in x]

def test_points3d():
    t = numpy.linspace(0, 4*numpy.pi, 20)
    cos = numpy.cos
    sin = numpy.sin

    x = sin(2*t)
    y = cos(t)
    z = cos(2*t)
    s = cMap(x,y,z)

    return points3d(x, y, z, s, colormap="spectral", scale_factor=0.25)

test_points3d()

I have no idea what color scheme you want, but you can evaluate the positions of x,y,z and return whatever scalar corresponds to the rgb value you are seeking.

Answer 4

This can now simply be done with the color argument

from mayavi import mlab
import numpy as np

c = np.random.rand(200, 3)
r = np.random.rand(200) / 10.

mlab.points3d(c[:, 0], c[:, 1], c[:, 2], r, color=(0.2, 0.4, 0.5))

mlab.show()