hdl = surf(X,Y,Z,C)

Parameter

Description

surf(x,y,Z,C) plots the colored parametric or non parametric surface defined by four arguments. The view point is specified by the 'view' proporty (see below).

surf(X,Y,Z) uses C = Z, so color is proportional to surface height.

The entries of C are scaled to correspond to the current colormap entries.The color of edges is given by the default foreground and can be changed by the properties 'edgecolor' . The color of faces is flat by default or interpolated. Use the 'facecolor' property (see examples below). The actual mapping of C values to colors depends on the colormap and the color axis (see colormap, caxis).

When x,y and Z are matrices of the same size, surf(x,y,Z) plots the parametric surface defined by vertices (x(i,j), y(i,j), Z(i,j)).

When x,y are vector arguments you must have length(x) = n and length(y) = m where [m,n] = size(Z).In this case, the vertices of the surface lines are the triples (x(j), y(i), Z(i,j)). Note that x corresponds to the columns of Z and y corresponds to the rows, example :

x=linspace(-1,1,20); y=linspace(-2,2,40);
Z=cos(y'*x);
surf(x,y,Z);

Note that surf(Z) uses x = 1:m and y = 1:n

Examples

[u,v]=meshgrid(linspace(0,%pi,50),linspace(%pi/4,%pi,25));
x=sin(v).*cos(u);
y=sin(v).*sin(u);
z=cos(v);
drawlater
surf(x,y,z,x,'facecolor','interp','edgecolor','none');
hold on
surf(x,-y,z,rand(z));
hold off
axis equal;
colormap cool
drawnow

Screenshot

See Also

plot , plot3 , surf , colormap , shading , caxis , colorbar

Authors

Stéphane Mottelet