How to display a float matrix as elevation values in a 3D plot in Python?

Question

I currently have a heat map which is a 2D float matrix (list of lists of floats to be accurate), and I can display it in 2D with matplotlib fairly easily, but I would like to display it in a 3D plot such that the column and row indices can by the X and Y values respectively, and the values in the matrix are Z (elevation) values. What can I use to do that? I tried using Axes3D but it didn't seem very suitable (or maybe I was using it wrong?). What I am looking to do is conceptually very simple, to pretend the matrix is a DEM and display it as such.

Also if possible I would like to be able to change viewing angles on-the-fly, without having to re-generate the plot.

Any ideas?

These two questions are related but don't quite answer my question:

3d plotting with python

Python: 3D contour from a 2D image - pylab and contourf

NB: The float matrix is rather large, typically 100x100 or more, and the last time I tried to plot it in 3D my system ran out of memory and started thrashing.

Answer 1

Your use case seems like it is tailor made for mayavi/mlab, which has a function that does exactly what you are asking and by default permits interactive 3D rotation:

import numpy as np; from mayavi import mlab
data = np.random.random((100,100))
mlab.surf(data)
mlab.show()