How to preserve scale of rotated lattice cloud scatter plot?

Question

Background: I am trying to animate a rotating 3D scatter plot using R's lattice::cloud() function. I create a sequence of PNG images in R, then create an animated GIF from the sequence.

The problem is that the scale of the plot changes with rotation so the animated cube appears to grow and shrink as it turns.

Here is an example using just two plots (based on one of the cloud examples):

library(lattice)
par.set <-
  list(axis.line = list(col = "transparent"),
     clip = list(panel = "off"))

print(cloud(Sepal.Length ~ Petal.Length * Petal.Width, 
    data = iris, cex = .8, 
    groups = Species, 
    screen = list(z = 0, x = 0, y = 0),
    par.settings = par.set,
    scales = list(col = "black")),
  split = c(1,1,2,1), more = TRUE)
print(cloud(Sepal.Length ~ Petal.Length * Petal.Width,
    data = iris, cex = .8, 
    groups = Species,
    screen = list(z = 0, x = 0, y = 30),
    par.settings = par.set,
    scales = list(col = "black")),
  split = c(2,1,2,1))

I would like the right-hand plot to appear the same size as the left-hand plot. In this example it is quite a bit smaller. I don't have to use R or lattice::cloud() but it is very close to what I want...

Trying rgl, it looks like maybe my copy of rgl is incompatible with my version of R. I'll upgrade R when I have a minute:

> library(rgl)
> df <- data.frame(x=runif(10,0,1), y=runif(10,0,1), z=runif(10,0,1), color=round(runif(10,1,3)))
> plot3d(df$x, df$y, df$z, col=df$color, size=2, type='s')
> rgl.snapshot("C:\\pic.png", fmt="png", top=TRUE )
[1] "failed"
Warning messages:
1: In rgl.snapshot("C:\\pic.png", fmt = "png", top = TRUE) :
  RGL: PNG Pixmap Saver Warning: Application was compiled with png.h from libpng-1.2.40
2: In rgl.snapshot("C:\\pic.png", fmt = "png", top = TRUE) :
  RGL: PNG Pixmap Saver Warning: Application  is  running with png.c from libpng-1.4.1
3: In rgl.snapshot("C:\\pic.png", fmt = "png", top = TRUE) :
  RGL: PNG Pixmap Saver Warning: Incompatible libpng version in application and library

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31) 
i386-pc-mingw32 

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252    LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                           LC_TIME=English_United States.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] rgl_0.92.798

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_2.11.1

I updated to R 2.12.2 and now this works (using GraphicsMagick instead of ImageMagick):

open3d()
with(iris, plot3d(Petal.Length, Petal.Width, Sepal.Length, col=Species))
movie3d(spin3d(), duration=12, dir="C:\\Movie", convert=FALSE)
system('"C:\\program files\\graphicsmagick-1.3.7-q8\\gm.exe" convert -delay 12 C:\\Movie\\movie*.png C:\\Movie\\animate.gif')

Answer 1

Try the rgl package, this is how I approached the same phenomea

require ("rgl")

df <- data.frame(x=runif(10,0,1), y=runif(10,0,1), z=runif(10,0,1), color=round(runif(10,1,3)))

plot3d(df$x, df$y, df$z, col=df$color, size=2, type='s')

?movie3d()

demo(flag)

test <- spin3d(rpm=6,axis=c(0,0,1))
?spin3d

open3d()
plot3d(oh3d(col="lightblue", alpha=0.5))
play3d(spin3d(axis=c(0,0,1), rpm=20), duration=3)


open3d()
plot3d( cube3d(col="green") )
M <- par3d("userMatrix")
play3d( par3dinterp( userMatrix=list(M,
                                 rotate3d(M, pi/2, 1, 0, 0),
                                 rotate3d(M, pi/2, 0, 1, 0) ) ), 
    duration=4 )

movie3d( spin3d(), duration=5 )

My session info for a confirmed working example.

R version 2.12.2 (2011-02-25)
Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252 
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] rgl_0.92.798

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_2.12.2