inserting colorbar in surf plots.

Hello Everyone,

I am using surf function to create a 3D shaded surface plot. I also define a variable C which is a 3 dimensional matrix. So if my number of rows and columns in Z is 155*125, my dimension of C matrix is 155*125*3.. I fill the color matrix C with RGB colors depending upon my criteria. The problem is when I want to display colorbar in my plot, I still get the standard RGB colorbar instead of the color matrix defined by me.

How can I modify the colorbar properties, so that it shows the actual colour being used in the plot.

thanks

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

Use the colormap function to set the figure's colormap to the one of your choice.

More per clarification:

%Emulate your C and Z
C = imresize(imread('peppers.png'),0.1);
Z = peaks(length(C));
Z = Z(1:size(C,1),1:ize(C,2));

%Surf it, facecolor is texturemap
surf(Z,C,'FaceColor','TextureMap');

%Extract 64 unique colors using rgb2ind, set it as the map and add colorbar
% For the peppers image this will look weird but if you have a good rgb
% image it will scale correctly.
[X, map] = rgb2ind(C,64);
colormap(map);
colorbar;

[Ricky]

actually sean I do not want to use a default colormap so I define my own RGB matrix which is of same size as my Z matrix. So if size of Z is m*n, size of C is m*n*3. For the surf function I give input as Z matirx and C matrix. I want to display this C matrix in colorbar.

[Sean de Wolski]

Ahh, okay. This is why a minimal working example always helps!

See more. In order to use a color bar, you will have to convert your rgb values to indices and extract the map - this is the purpose of rgb2ind.

[Elizabeth Grace]

This gives me a colorbar that is out of order.