Develop Reference

Matplotlib - How to assign an alpha value to each point on a 3D scatter plot? Radar Data Included

So I am trying to create a 3D scatter plot of radar data, where each point is assigned an alpha value based on the amplitude of the corresponding pixel.
I have done this looping through all x,y,z points and building the scatter plot point by point assigning the alpha values on each iteration. But once the scatter plot is created it is very slow and unable to manipulate the graph without considerable time spent waiting for the plot to update.
Points is a normalised (0 to 1) array.
Here is a link to my data
Data
File preparation:
def normalise0to1(data):
normalised = (data - np.min(data)) / (np.max(data) - np.min(data))
return normalised
Data = np.loadtxt('filepath.txt')
points2D = normalise0to1(Data) #Is (101,400) size
points3D = np.reshape(points2D,(101,20,20)) #Is (101,20,20) size
And the first attempt at creating the 3D scatter plot:
def Scatter_Plot1(points3D):
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(projection='3d')
for x in range(0,points3D[1]):
for y in range(0,points3D[2]):
for z in range(0,points3D[0]):
val = points3D[z,x,y]
ax.scatter(x, y, z, alpha=val,c='black',s=1)
plt.show()
This takes a long time to run and is very slow once created.
In 2D, I can do something like this. Bear in mind this is the same array as the 3D 'points' array, but the (20x20) has been flattened to 400. I have provided an image of the flattened array, you can see how it creates an image where intensity is scaled to the alpha value.
def Scatter_Plot2(points2D):
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot()
x_=np.linspace(0,points2D.shape[1]-1,points2D.shape[1])
y_=np.linspace(0,points2D.shape[0]-1,points2D.shape[0])
x,y = np.meshgrid(x_,y_)
ax.scatter(x,y,alpha=points2D.flatten(),s=1,c='black')
plt.show()
This image is the flattened version of the 3D plot I want to create, where instead of 400 length, it would be (20x20) and overall the 3D shape is (101,20,20).
The problem comes when trying to assign the alpha to a 3D plot, in 2D it seems happy enough when I provide a flattened array to the alpha parameter.
I would like something like this, but whether that's possible is another question..
def Scatter_Plot3(points3D):
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(projection='3d')
x_=np.linspace(0,points3D.shape[2]-1,points3D.shape[2])
y_=np.linspace(0,points3D.shape[1]-1,points3D.shape[1])
z_=np.linspace(0,points3D.shape[0]-1,points3D.shape[0])
x,y,z = np.meshgrid(x_,y_,z_)
ax.scatter(x,y,z,alpha=points3D,s=1,c='black')
plt.show()
Results in this image, which seems a bit random in terms of how the alpha is assigned. You would expect to see the dark horizontal lines as in the first picture. What I want may not be possible, I'm open to using another package, perhaps pyqtgraph or mayavi etc. But matplotlib would be preferable.
Thank you!
Edit:
I have achieved something similar to what I would like, though not exactly. I have used the c and cmap inputs. This isn't ideal as I am dealing with a 3D cube and viewing the centre is still difficult but it has correctly mapped a variation to the data. But it doesn't work when I use the alpha parameter.
Notice the 2 main horizontal bands and the dark bit in the centre which is hard to see.
What I need is the same mapping but rather opacity than colour.
c = (points2D.T.flatten())
ax.scatter(x,y,z,s=1,c=c,cmap='viridis_r')

2d histogram: Get result of full nbins x nbins

I am using matplotlib's hist2d function to make a 2d histogram of data that I have, however I am having trouble interpreting the result.
Here is the plot I have:
This was created using the line:
hist = plt.hist2d(X, Y, (160,160), norm=mpl.colors.LogNorm(vmin=1, vmax=20))
This returns a 2d array of (160, 160), as well as the bin edges etc.
In the plot there are bins which have a high frequency of values (yellow bins). I would like to be able to get the results of this histogram and filter out the bins that have low values, preserving the high bins. But I would expect there to be 160*160 values, but I can only find 160 X and 160 Y values.
What I would like to do is essentially filter out the more dense data from the less dense data. If this means representing the data as a single value (a bin), then that is ok.
Am I misinterpreting the function or am I not accessing the data results correctly? I have tried with spicy also but the results seem to be in the same or similar format.

Not sure if this is what you wanted.
The hist2d docs specify that the function returns a tuple of size 4, where the first item h is a heatmap.
This h will have the same shape as bins.
You can capture the output (it will still plot), and use argwhere to find coordinates where values exceed, say, the 90th percentile:
h, xedges, yedges, img = hist = plt.hist2d(X, Y, bins=(160,160), norm=mpl.colors.LogNorm(vmin=1, vmax=20))
print(list(np.argwhere(h > np.percentile(h, 90))))

You need Seaborn package.
You mentioned
I would like to be able to get the results of this histogram and filter out the bins that have low values, preserving the high bins.
You should definitely be using one of those:
seaborn.joinplot(...,kind='hex') : it shows the counts of observations that fall within hexagonal bins. This plot works best with relatively large dataset.
seaborn.joinplot(...,kind='kde') : use the kernel density estimation to visualize a bivariate distribution. I recommed it better.
Example 'kde'
Use number of levels n_levels and shade_lowest=False to ignore low values.
import seaborn as sns
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
x, y = np.random.randn(2, 300)
plt.figure(figsize=(6,5))
sns.kdeplot(x, y, zorder=0, n_levels=6, shade=True, cbar=True,
shade_lowest=False, cmap='viridis')

Matplotlib - Contourf - How to have a non-uniform ticks spacing?

I would like to plot contourf with (lat,depth,temp) and then have similar spacing as in the figure below (the temperature vary more near the surface then at depth, so I want to emphasized this region).
My depth array is not uniform (i.e. depth = [5,15,...,4975,5185,...]. I want to have such non-uniform vertical spacing.
I would like to show yticks = [10,100,500,1000,1500,2000,3000,4000,5000], and depth array does not have those exact values.
z = np.arange(0,50) # I want uniform spacing
pos = ([0,2,5,10,15,20,30,40,48]) # I want some yticks (not all of them)
ax=plt.contourf(lat,z,temp) # temp is a variable with dimensions (lat,depth)
plt.colorbar()
plt.gca().yaxis.set_ticks(pos) # Set some yticks, not all of them
plt.yticks(z[pos],depth[pos].astype(int)) # Replace the dummy values of z-array by something meaningful
plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
plt.grid(linestyle=':')
plt.gca().set(ylabel='depth (m)',xlabel='Latitude')'''
Potential Temperature of the Atlantic Ocean:

Per the matplotlib docs on yticks, you can specify the labels you want to use. In your case, if you want to show the labels [10,100,500,1000,1500,2000,3000,4000,5000] you can simply pass that list as the second argument in plt.yticks(), like so
plt.yticks(z[pos], [10,100,500,1000,1500,2000,3000,4000,5000])
and it will display the yticks accordingly. The issue arises in the specification of the positions - since the depth array does not have points corresponding exactly to the desired ytick values you will need to interpolate in order to find the exact position at which to place the labels. Unless the approximate positions specified in pos are already sufficient, in which case the above suffices.
If the depth data are not uniformly spaced then you can use numpy.interp to perform the interpolation, as shown below
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
# Create some depth data that is not uniformly spaced over [0, 5500]
depth = [(np.random.random() - 0.5)*25 + ii for ii in np.linspace(0, 5500, 50)]
lat = np.linspace(-75, 75, 50)
z = np.linspace(0,50, 50)
yticks = [10,100,500,1000,1500,2000,3000,4000,5000]
# Interpolate depths to get z-positions
pos = np.interp(yticks, depth, z)
temp = np.outer(lat, z) # Arbitrarily populate temp for demonstration
ax = plt.contourf(lat,z,temp)
plt.colorbar()
plt.gca().yaxis.set_ticks(pos)
plt.yticks(pos,yticks) # Place yticks at interpolated z-positions
plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
plt.grid(linestyle=':')
plt.gca().set(ylabel='Depth (m)',xlabel='Latitude')
plt.show()
This will find the exact positions where the yticks would fall if the depth array had data at those positions and place them accordingly as shown below.

Plotting a 2D mesh grid with matplotlib

I would like to plot a 2D discretization rectangular mesh with non-regular
x y axes values, e.g. the typical discretization meshes used in CFD.
An example of the code may be:
fig = plt.figure(1,figsize=(12,8))
axes = fig.add_subplot(111)
matplotlib.rcParams.update({'font.size':17})
axes.set_xticks(self.xPoints)
axes.set_yticks(self.yPoints)
plt.grid(color='black', linestyle='-', linewidth=1)
myName = "2D.jpg"
fig.savefig(myName)
where self.xPoints and self.yPoints are 1D non-regular vectors.
This piece of code produce a good discretization mesh, the problem are the
xtics and ytics labels because they appear for all values of xPoints and yPoints (they overlap).
How can I easily redefine the printed values in the axes?
Let's say I only want to show the minimum and maximum value for x and y and not all values from the discretization mesh.
I cann't post a example-figure because it is the first time I ask something here (I can send it by mail if requested)

the problem is that you explicitly told matplotlib to label each point when you wrote:
axes.set_xticks(self.xPoints)
axes.set_yticks(self.yPoints)
comment out those lines and see what the result looks like.
Of course, if you only want the first and last point labelled, it becomes:
axes.set_xticks([self.xPoints[0], self.xPoints[-1]])
...

If the gridline was specified by axes.set_xticks(), I don't think it would be possible to show ticks without overlap in your case.
I may have a solution for you:
...
ax = plt.gca()
#Arr_y: y-direction data, 1D numpy array or list.
for j in range(len(Arr_y)):
plt.hline(y = Arr_y[j], xmin = Arr_x.min(), xmax = Arr_x.max(), color = 'black')
#Arr_x: x-direction data, 1D numpy array or list.
for i in range(len(Arr_x)):
plt.vline(x = Arr_x[i], ymin = Arr_y.min(), ymax = Arr_y.max(), color = 'black')
#Custom your ticks here, 1D numpy array or list.
ax.set_xticks(Arr_xticks)
ax.set_yticks(Arr_yticks)
plt.xlim(Arr_x.min(), Arr_x.max())
plt.ylim(Arr_y.min(), Arr_y.max())
plt.show()
...
hlines and vlines are horizontal and vertical lines, you can specify those lines with boundary data in both x and y directions.
I tried it with 60×182 non uniform mesh grid which cost me 1.2s, hope I can post a picture here.

Generate Weight Map in Color with MatPlotLib?

I have a map, on top of which I wish to overlay a color weight map. The weight map has m x n 1m x 1m boxes. I have many points, and each point carries a weight. The weight of a box is calculated by summing up the weights of all the points that fall into that box.
Now according to their wights, a certain color is filled for each box according to its weight.
The desired outcome is similar to the one shown here, but
The map and the weight map have to be overlayed nicely in my case.
Instead of frequency, the weights that have been calculated should be used to assign the color.
How may I do this?

If I understand you correctly: you have a set of points, each of which has an x-coordinate, a y-coordinate and a weight associated with it.
The answers in the question you linked to already describe pretty much exactly what you want to do. The only difference is that you can use the weights= argument to get the weighted count in each bin.
For example, you could use
wcounts, xedges, yedges = np.histogram2d(x, y, weights=w)
to get your weighted histogram, then do
extent = xedges[0], xedges[-1], yedges[0], yedges[-1]
imshow(wcounts, extent=extent, alpha=0.5)
to display it.
I don't know what you mean by overlaying it on a 'map', but you can use the alpha= argument to imshow() to make the image semi-transparent (or you could just draw your 'map' on top of the image).
Likewise, you could do
hexbin(x, y, C=w, alpha=0.5)
to draw a weighted hexagonal binning plot, in this case using the C= argument to specify the weights, and again using alpha= to control the transparency of the plot.
Edit
Ok, so you want to compute the histogram over a specified grid of bin locations. Supposing your x-coordinates are positions between 0m and 100m, your y-coordinates are between 0m and 75m, and you want each bin to be 1m by 1m. You can pass a tuple of arrays specifying the bin edges in x and y to np.histogram2d():
# remember that for n bins there are n+1 bin edges
x_edges = np.linspace(0, 100, 101)
y_edges = np.linspace(0, 75, 76)
wcounts = np.histogram2d(x, y, weights=w, bins=(x_edges, y_edges))[0]
Now wcounts is a (100, 75) array, with each element representing the weighted count in a 1m by 1m bin.