Tri-Surface Plot in Python using Matplotlib

Last Updated : 25 Apr, 2025

A Tri-Surface Plot is a type of surface plot, created by triangulation of compact surfaces of finite number of triangles which cover the whole surface in a manner that each and every point on the surface is in triangle. The intersection of any two triangles results in void or a common edge or vertex. This type of plot is created where the evenly sampled grids are restrictive and inconvenient to plot. Generally Tri-Surface plots are created by calling ax.plot_trisurf() function of matplotlib library. Some of the attributes of the function are listed below:

Attribute	Parameter
X, Y, Z	dataset as 1D array to be plotted
colors	color of the surface patches
cmap	color map to set the color of surface patches
norm	parameter to normalize map values of colors
vmin	minimum value of map
vamx	maximum value of map
shade	attribute to shade the facecolors

Example 1: Let’s create a basic Tri-Surface plot using the ax.plot_trisurf() function.

Python3

# Import libraries
from mpl_toolkits import mplot3d
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
 
# Creating dataset
z = np.linspace(0, 50000, 100)
x = np.sin(z)
y = np.cos(z) 
 
# Creating figure
fig = plt.figure(figsize =(14, 9))
ax = plt.axes(projection ='3d')
 
# Creating plot
ax.plot_trisurf(x, y, z,
                linewidth = 0.2,
                antialiased = True);
 
# show plot
plt.show()

Output :

Tri-Surface Plot in Python using Matplotlib

Example 2 : For better understanding Let’s take another example.

Python3

# Import libraries
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D  
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt  
import numpy as np  
 
 
# Creating radii and angles
r = np.linspace(0.125, 1.0, 100)  
a = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 
                100,
                endpoint = False)  
   
# Repeating all angles for every radius  
a = np.repeat(a[..., np.newaxis], 100, axis = 1)  
   
# Creating dataset
x = np.append(0, (r * np.cos(a)))  
y = np.append(0, (r * np.sin(a)))    
z = (np.sin(x ** 4) + np.cos(y ** 4)) 
   
# Creating figure
fig = plt.figure(figsize =(16, 9))  
ax = plt.axes(projection ='3d')  
 
# Creating color map
my_cmap = plt.get_cmap('hot')
   
# Creating plot
trisurf = ax.plot_trisurf(x, y, z,
                         cmap = my_cmap,
                         linewidth = 0.2, 
                         antialiased = True,
                         edgecolor = 'grey')  
fig.colorbar(trisurf, ax = ax, shrink = 0.5, aspect = 5)
ax.set_title('Tri-Surface plot')
 
# Adding labels
ax.set_xlabel('X-axis', fontweight ='bold') 
ax.set_ylabel('Y-axis', fontweight ='bold') 
ax.set_zlabel('Z-axis', fontweight ='bold')
     
# show plot
plt.show()

Output:

Surface plots and Contour plots in Python

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Tri-Surface Plot in Python using Matplotlib

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