Plot closer lines in foreground with pyplot - python

I am trying to project some 3D paths with pyplot. I am running into the issue that pyplot will doesn't plot overlapping lines correctly. If i run the following code:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# make figure
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
ax.set_xlim([-1,1])
ax.set_ylim([-1,1])
ax.set_zlim([-1,1])
# define 2 easily distiguishable paths
path1 = np.array( [np.zeros(100),
np.linspace(0.5,-0.5,100),
np.ones(100)*0.5])
path2 = np.array( [np.linspace(0.5,-0.5,100),
np.ones(100)*0.5,
np.zeros(100)])
#plot paths in order
ax.plot(path1[0], path1[1], path1[2], 'r')
ax.plot(path2[0], path2[1], path2[2], 'b')
plt.show()
I get the image below. You can see that, even though the blue line should be behind the red one, it is projected in front since it was plotted later. For more complicated paths this behaviour becomes quite unpredictable. Is there a way (either in pyplot or another library) to change the behaviour such that the closest line is always in the foreground?

I ended up finding a reasonable solution. If the observer position is set at the start, you can you the 'zorder' parameter of the plot function to get correct behaviour. It's a bit of a pain but it works.

Related

Displaying minor grid lines for wide x axis ranges (log)

I noticed a 'strange' behaviour when running the following code:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib.ticker import (MultipleLocator, AutoMinorLocator)
freqs = np.logspace(2,4)
freqs_ext = np.logspace(2, 10)
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1,2)
ax [0].plot(freqs , freqs**2)
#ax[0].xaxis.set_minor_locator(AutoMinorLocator(5))
ax[0].grid(which='both')
#ax[0].minorticks_on()
ax[0].set_xscale( 'log')
ax[1].plot(freqs_ext,freqs_ext**2)
#ax[l].xaxis.set_minor_locator(AutoMinorLocator(5))
ax[1].grid(which='both')
#ax[1].minorticks on()
ax[1].set_xscale('log')
The output is the following:
I have tried more variants than I care to report, (some are commented out in the code above), but I cannot get matplotlib to draw minor gridlines for the plot on the right side, as it does for the one on the left.
I think I have understood that the "problem" lies in where the ticks are located for the second plot, which has a much larger span. They are every two decades and I believe this might be the source of the minor grid lines not displaying.
I have played with xaxis.set_xticks and obtained ticks every decade, but still cannot get this to correctly produce the gridlines.
It is probably something stupid but I can't see it.
NOTE : I know that matplotlib doesn't turn the minor ticks on by default, and in this case this action is "triggered" by changing the scale to log (that's why axis.grid(which='both') actually only acts on the x axis)
OK, I have found this answer:
Matplotlib: strange double-decade axis ticks in log plot
which actually shows how the issue is a design choice for matplotlib starting with v2. Answer was given in 2017 so, not the newest issue :)
The following code correctly plots the minor grids as wanted:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib.ticker import LogLocator
freqs = np.logspace(2,4)
freqs_ext = np.logspace(2, 10)
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1,2)
ax[0].plot(freqs , freqs**2)
ax[0].grid(which='both')
ax[0].set_xscale( 'log')
ax[1].plot(freqs_ext,freqs_ext**2)
ax[1].set_xscale('log')
ax[1].xaxis.set_major_locator(LogLocator(numticks=15))
ax[1].xaxis.set_minor_locator(LogLocator(numticks=15,subs=np.arange(2,10)))
ax[1].grid(which='both')

Matplotlib canvas as numpy array artefacts

I want to convert a matplotlib figure into a numpy array. I have been able to do this by accessing the contents of the renderer directly. However, when I call imshow on the numpy array it has what looks like aliasing artefacts along the edges which aren't present in the original figure.
I've tried playing around with various parameters but can't figure out how to fix the artefacts from imshow. The differences in the images remain if I save the figures to an image file.
Note that what I want to achieve is a way to confirm that the content of the array is the same as the figure I viewed before. I think probably these artefacts are not present in the numpy array but are created during the imshow call. Perhaps approriate configuration of imshow can resolve the problem.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib.patches import Rectangle
import math
fig = plt.figure(frameon=False)
ax = plt.gca()
ax.add_patch(Rectangle((0,0), 1, 1, angle=45, color="red"))
ax.set_xlim(-2,2)
ax.set_ylim(-2,2)
ax.set_aspect(1)
plt.axis("off")
fig.canvas.draw()
plt.savefig("rec1.png")
plt.show()
X = np.array(fig.canvas.renderer._renderer)
fig = plt.figure(frameon=False)
ax = plt.gca()
plt.axis("off")
plt.imshow(X)
plt.savefig("rec2.png")
plt.show()
These are clearly resampling artefacts, which can be avoided by using plt.figimage which specifically adds a non-resampled image to the figure.
plt.figimage(X)
plt.show()
Note that this will not work with the %matplotlib inline in Jupyter Notebook, but it does work fine with %matplotlib notebook and with GUI backends.
By adding the fig.tight_layout with padding of -1.08, I was able to get the exact image as the real image.
X = np.array(fig.canvas.renderer._renderer)
fig = plt.figure(frameon=False)
ax = plt.gca()
plt.axis("off")
plt.imshow(X)
fig.tight_layout(pad=-1.08)
plt.savefig("rec2.png")
plt.show()
Real Image
From numpy array
I hope that solves your problem, atleast till you find a better way. Cheers.
The best one I can think of is by using cv2 (openCV-python) library. My solution does require saving the image and in the case of color images, the decoded images will have the channels stored in B G R order.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib.patches import Rectangle
import math
import cv2 #import openCV
fig = plt.figure(frameon=False)
ax = plt.gca()
ax.add_patch(Rectangle((0,0), 1, 1, angle=45, color="red"))
ax.set_xlim(-2,2)
ax.set_ylim(-2,2)
ax.set_aspect(1)
plt.axis("off")
fig.canvas.draw()
plt.savefig("rec1.png")
plt.show()`
im = cv2.imread("rec1.png")
print(type(im)) #prints numpy.ndarray
cv2.imshow("pic",im) #creates a window named pic, loads im
cv2.waitKey(0) #has no time limit, window destroyed on any key press
cv2.destroyAllWindows()
Final result looks like
Since it is a numpy array, you can call methods on it for your comparison.
print(im.shape) #prints (288, 432, 3)
The image that is shown in the second plot is plotted smaller than the first image; the reason is that the complete first figure's image is squeezed into a newly created smaller axes -- this would be obvious when not turning the axes off.
In order to make sure the second figure only shows the image itself, you may adjust the margins, such that there is no spacing between the figure edge and the axes, using subplots_adjust.
fig = plt.figure(frameon=False)
fig.subplots_adjust(0,0,1,1)
ax = plt.gca()
plt.axis("off")
plt.imshow(X)
This produces the desired plot.
Note however that the array is not exactly the same due to antialiasing being applied when saving the png file. You may find out via
X = np.array(fig.canvas.renderer._renderer)/255.
Y = plt.imread("rec1.png")
print(np.all(X==Y))
## This prints False
Inversely speaking, if you want to have the same numpy array as the one that is saved, you should make sure to use the saved image itself.
plt.savefig("rec1.png")
X = plt.imread("rec1.png")
# use X from here onwards
Thanks to the comments who pointed out interpolation as the cause. I found the following code (adapted for Python 3) which displays the image in the way I want; identical to the first image but via the numpy array.
import PIL.Image
from io import BytesIO
import IPython.display
import numpy as np
def showarray(a, fmt='png'):
a = np.uint8(a)
f = BytesIO()
PIL.Image.fromarray(a).save(f, fmt)
IPython.display.display(IPython.display.Image(data=f.getvalue()))
source: https://gist.github.com/kylemcdonald/2f1b9a255993bf9b2629

Zoom an inline 3D matplotlib figure *without* using the mouse?

This question explains how to change the "camera position" of a 3D plot in matplotlib by specifying the elevation and azimuth angles. ax.view_init(elev=10,azim=20), for example.
Is there a similar way to specify the zoom of the figure numerically -- i.e. without using the mouse?
The only relevant question I could find is this one, but the accepted answer to that involves installing another library, which then also requires using the mouse to zoom.
EDIT:
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about changing the figure size (using fig.set_size_inches() or similar). The figure size is fine; the problem is that the plotted stuff only takes up a small part of the figure:
The closest solution to view_init is setting ax.dist directly. According to the docs for get_proj "dist is the distance of the eye viewing point from the object point". The initial value is currently hardcoded with dist = 10. Lower values (above 0!) will result in a zoomed in plot.
Note: This behavior is not really documented and may change. Changing the limits of the axes to plot only the relevant parts is probably a better solution in most cases. You could use ax.autoscale(tight=True) to do this conveniently.
Working IPython/Jupyter example:
%matplotlib inline
from IPython.display import display
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import axes3d
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
# Grab some test data.
X, Y, Z = axes3d.get_test_data(0.05)
# Plot a basic wireframe.
ax.view_init(90, 0)
ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z, rstride=10, cstride=10)
plt.close()
from ipywidgets import interact
#interact(dist=(1, 20, 1))
def update(dist=10):
ax.dist = dist
display(fig)
Output
dist = 10
dist = 5

Save figure with clip box from another figure

Normally if you plot two different figures using the default settings in pyplot, they will be exactly the same size, and if saved can be neatly aligned in PowerPoint or the like. I'd like to generate one figure, however, which has a legend outside of the figure. The script I'm using is shown below.
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x=np.linspace(0,1,201)
y1=x**2
y2=np.sin(x)
fig1=plt.figure(1)
plt.plot(x,y1,label='y1')
handles1,labels1=plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels()
lgd1=plt.gca().legend(handles1,labels1,bbox_to_anchor=(1.27,1),borderaxespad=0.)
fig2=plt.figure(2)
plt.plot(x,y2)
fig1.savefig('fig1',bbox_extra_artists=(lgd1,),bbox_inches='tight')
fig2.savefig('fig2')
plt.show()
The problem is that in PowerPoint, I can no longer align the two figures left and have their axes aligned. Due to the use of the 'extra artists' and 'bbox_inches=tight' arguments for the first figure, the width of its margins becomes different from the second figure.
Is there any way to 'transfer' the clip box from the first figure to the second figure, such that they can be aligned by 'align left' in PowerPoint?
I think an easier way to achieve what you want is to just construct one figure with two subplots, and let matplotlib align everything for you.
Do you think doing something like this is a good idea?
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
x=np.linspace(0,1,201)
y1=x**2
y2=np.sin(x)
fig = plt.figure()
a = fig.add_subplot(211)
a.plot(x,y1, label='y1')
lgd1 = a.legend(bbox_to_anchor = (1.27,1), borderaxespad=0.)
a = fig.add_subplot(212)
a.plot(x,y2)
fig.savefig('fig',bbox_extra_artists=(lgd1,),bbox_inches='tight')

matplotlib plotting multiple lines in 3D

I am trying to plot multiple lines in a 3D plot using matplotlib. I have 6 datasets with x and y values. What I've tried so far was, to give each point in the data sets a z-value. So all points in data set 1 have z=1 all points of data set 2 have z=2 and so on.
Then I exported them into three files. "X.txt" containing all x-values, "Y.txt" containing all y-values, same for "Z.txt".
Here's the code so far:
#!/usr/bin/python
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import axes3d
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import pylab
xdata = '/X.txt'
ydata = '/Y.txt'
zdata = '/Z.txt'
X = np.loadtxt(xdata)
Y = np.loadtxt(ydata)
Z = np.loadtxt(zdata)
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
ax.plot_wireframe(X,Y,Z)
plt.show()
What I get looks pretty close to what I need. But when using wireframe, the first point and the last point of each dataset are connected. How can I change the colour of the line for each data set and how can I remove the connecting lines between the datasets?
Is there a better plotting style then wireframe?
Load the data sets individually, and then plot each one individually.
I don't know what formats you have, but you want something like this
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.axes3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, ax = plt.subplots(subplot_kw={'projection': '3d'})
datasets = [{"x":[1,2,3], "y":[1,4,9], "z":[0,0,0], "colour": "red"} for _ in range(6)]
for dataset in datasets:
ax.plot(dataset["x"], dataset["y"], dataset["z"], color=dataset["colour"])
plt.show()
Each time you call plot (or plot_wireframe but i don't know what you need that) on an axes object, it will add the data as a new series. If you leave out the color argument matplotlib will choose them for you, but it's not too smart and after you add too many series' it will loop around and start using the same colours again.
n.b. i haven't tested this - can't remember if color is the correct argument. Pretty sure it is though.

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