Continuous 3D plotting (i.e. figure update) using python-matplotlib?

Question

I have a simulation which calculates surface data for each iteration of the simulation. I would like to continuously plot that data as a surface plot to the same window (upd

Answer 1

You do not need to plt.show() if it is an animated (interactive) plot. You also want interactive set to True, not False which is the same as calling ion() in your 2d example. Also, you need to remove() the surface plots from previous frames if you do not want to see them all.

Otherwise you were pretty close.

This works for me:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
from matplotlib import cm
from matplotlib.ticker import LinearLocator, FixedLocator, FormatStrFormatter
import matplotlib, time

class plot3dClass( object ):

    def __init__( self, systemSideLength, lowerCutoffLength ):
        self.systemSideLength = systemSideLength
        self.lowerCutoffLength = lowerCutoffLength
        self.fig = plt.figure()
        self.ax = self.fig.add_subplot( 111, projection='3d' )
        self.ax.set_zlim3d( -10e-9, 10e9 )

        rng = np.arange( 0, self.systemSideLength, self.lowerCutoffLength )
        self.X, self.Y = np.meshgrid(rng,rng)

        self.ax.w_zaxis.set_major_locator( LinearLocator( 10 ) )
        self.ax.w_zaxis.set_major_formatter( FormatStrFormatter( '%.03f' ) )

        heightR = np.zeros( self.X.shape )
        self.surf = self.ax.plot_surface( 
            self.X, self.Y, heightR, rstride=1, cstride=1, 
            cmap=cm.jet, linewidth=0, antialiased=False )
        # plt.draw() maybe you want to see this frame?

    def drawNow( self, heightR ):
        self.surf.remove()
        self.surf = self.ax.plot_surface( 
            self.X, self.Y, heightR, rstride=1, cstride=1, 
            cmap=cm.jet, linewidth=0, antialiased=False )
        plt.draw()                      # redraw the canvas
        time.sleep(1)

matplotlib.interactive(True)

p = plot3dClass(5,1)
for i in range(2):
    p.drawNow(np.random.random(p.X.shape))