Matlab: How to smooth colors of matrix in plot3( ) function?

Question

I am using plot3 to plot a matrix such that the resultant figure shows different colors for each vector of that matrix:

plot3(Grid.x1(:,:),Grid.x2(:,:),phi(:,:))

How can I smooth the coloring of this plot? Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use varycolor from FileExchange to construct and control a continuous range color spectrum. This way the transition between different lines will seem more natural and proximal lines will have similar colors.

You can read more and see examples usage here http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2008/08/15/colors-for-your-multi-line-plots/

Example:

[X,Y,Z] = peaks(128);

% raw plot3()
figure; plot3(X, Y, Z); 

% define set equal to line number
ColorSet = varycolor(128);

% smooth plot3()
figure; hold all;
set(gca, 'ColorOrder', ColorSet);
plot3(X, Y, Z); view(3); 

Update: For a continuous 3D plot (i.e. a surface) you can use surfl instead of plot3 and display your data as a 3-D Surface Plot (with Shading). You can additionally apply any colormap on the resulting surface, i.e. gray or ColorSet as above.

surfl(X,Y,Z);
shading interp;
colormap(gray);