Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-27 Thread Friedrich Romstedt
http://www.friedrichromstedt.org/python/pyclip/a01.Zerteilung.pdf
(It's unfortunately in german, but the graphics are self-explaining)
A school mate working together with me on the project has worked that out.

H = number of corners of the front triangle lying inside of the back triangle

V = number of corners of the back triangle lying inside of the front triangle

S = number of the collinear edges of the two triangles

Z = number of intersection points of the two tringles' edges, minus
the number of those occuring because of collinear edges.

Red: front triangle
Black: back triangle
Green: subdivision lines in the back triangle.

I will check my implementation in C++ today.  I will maybe need some
advice in making a Python module out of it.

Friedrich

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-27 Thread Ben Axelrod
Interesting, but I think subdividing triangles like this is unnecessary.  For 
most cases, when one triangle completely covers the other, all that is required 
it to Z order the triangles.  This is what mplot3d does already.  The only case 
we have yet to handle is when one triangle pierces the other.  As seen in the 
attached image.  Triangle B is mostly behind triangle A, except for a small 
piece labeled C.  All we would have to do is determine the line of 
intersection, then create a new triangle C.  Then we just draw B first, then A, 
then C.  

I think the hardest part is probably doing this for general polygons and 
handling the edges properly.  But that should not be super hard.

-Ben




From: Friedrich Romstedt [friedrichromst...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:28 AM
To: matplotlib-users
Subject: Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

http://www.friedrichromstedt.org/python/pyclip/a01.Zerteilung.pdf
(It's unfortunately in german, but the graphics are self-explaining)
A school mate working together with me on the project has worked that out.

H = number of corners of the front triangle lying inside of the back triangle

V = number of corners of the back triangle lying inside of the front triangle

S = number of the collinear edges of the two triangles

Z = number of intersection points of the two tringles' edges, minus
the number of those occuring because of collinear edges.

Red: front triangle
Black: back triangle
Green: subdivision lines in the back triangle.

I will check my implementation in C++ today.  I will maybe need some
advice in making a Python module out of it.

Friedrich

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attachment: triangles.png--
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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-26 Thread Friedrich Romstedt
2010/2/26 Gael Varoquaux gael.varoqu...@normalesup.org:
 What Eric was most probably talking about is the newer versions of
 Mayavi, that we tend to call 'mayavi2', even though we are now up to
 version 3, in particular the mlab interface:

 http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi/docs/development/html/mayavi/mlab.html

 which is demoed in the examples:
 http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi/docs/development/html/mayavi/auto/examples.html

 I believe that Mayavi does take care of the task you are interested in.
 It has its limitation and annoyances, but a lot of people use it quite
 efficiently to do 3D plotting, for simple problems to very complex ones.

Wow, that's really impressive!  I admit that adding 3D plotting
capability to matplotlib would be like reinventing the wheel, and it
would be a quite rectangular-shaped wheel.

But, unfortunately, I need a physical rendering engine with light
sources and reflectance/transmittance simulation from real measured
data anyway, and the 3D rendering engine will be a byproduct.  But, I
think, it would be more easy to use Agg directly as the backend rather
than going via matplotlib, although it may be an option.

Friedrich

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-26 Thread Reinier Heeres
Dear all,

One of the great advantages of the current mplot3d design is that it
produces complete vector based graphics with the same look-and-feel as
your 2d plots. Integration with OpenGL will certainly change this, as
the rendering will always give you (as far as I know) a bitmap. I
think this is what matlab does, and I consider it a major weakness. I
therefore believe that the mplot3d approach is good for what it is
designed for (which means not being a complete 3d rendering engine).

The drawback, of course, is that you have to do more 3d stuff
yourself. There are some good reasons why some problems are *very*
hard to solve, but others are doable, such as z-ordering all the
polygons (and perhaps splitting them if that's required). Gouraud
shading is something else that should be possible. Getting dashed 3d
lines z-sorted in a good-looking way sounds very hard to me, but for
solid lines it should be ok.

As a comment to a previous post, by Gael if I'm not mistaken: mplot3d
internally has all info in 3d. In the end you have to go 2d somewhere,
and I personally think that we do this at the correct level.

Let me mention some more areas of improvement. Currently the Axis3D
code does some magic to draw the axes lines and ticks in the correct
location. It would be better to rewrite this class to use actual
Line3D instances to reduce duplicate code.

This brings me to my last remark, which is about the fact that Axes3D
currently inherits from Axes. The reason why this was is of course to
reduce code duplication. However, I can see why this can be very
confusing to the user since it is indeed not clear what is and what is
not supposed to work. I need to think a bit about the solution; indeed
it might be better to not inherit from Axes. But do not call that all
too soon, since Axes is still doing some work under the hood. On the
other hand, many of the functions probably don't really make sense.

I think restarting from scratch is almost never a good plan...

Cheers,
Reinier

PS: John, I would be interested in mentoring a gsoc student.

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Eric Firing efir...@hawaii.edu wrote:
 John Hunter wrote:
 [...]

 It looks like we have enough 3D projects to justify a google summer of
 code student. Would those of you with an interest in mplot3d and some
 knowledge of the internals be interested in helping mentor a student?


 http://www.mail-archive.com/matplotlib-de...@lists.sourceforge.net/msg01343.html

 Is it time for some re-thinking of the approach to 3-D?  I am a
 bystander, but I have the uneasy sense that trying to turn mplot3d into
 a first-class 3-D plotting tool may be a misapplication of effort.
 Might the effort be more productive if applied to mayavi, or built on
 mayavi, so that the 3-D engine is already taken care of?

 Eric

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-26 Thread Alan G Isaac
On 2/26/2010 3:04 AM, Friedrich Romstedt wrote:
 I need a physical rendering engine with light
 sources and reflectance/transmittance simulation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POV-Ray ?

Alan Isaac


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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-26 Thread Jakub Nowacki
Dear all,

I don't know if creating full blown 3d library makes much sense. I think 
Reinier is right here that the current mplot3d creates quite satisfactory 
outcome with matplotlib look-and-feel we all like. In general, there are 3d 
libraries/packages out there (VTK, Mayavi2 etc.), which do most of the stuff 
one would need. The problem is many times using is not that trivial. Also, the 
installation process is usually much more complex, eg. setting up mayavi2 on 
snow leopard took me several days. 

I asked the question in the first place because in many cases I need rather 
simple 3d plotting tool, without al the massive rendering capabilities etc. 
Since I use matplotlib anyway, it would be nice to use the same tool and not be 
forced to install and learn something new just to plot not very complicated 
surface. Hence, I think the main goal here should be to have a relatively 
simple but usable plotting tool with matplotlib look-an-feel. 

BTW I didn't know that my simple question would generate such a discussion. :)

Best wishes,

Jakub
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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-26 Thread Ben Axelrod
I also agree with Reinier.  I want my 3d plots to look as close as possible to 
my 2d plots.  Because mplot3d uses so much of the same matplotlib core, this is 
trivial.  As Friedrich mentioned, the mplot3d code is actually pretty small.  
To me, that is a great feature.   I found the mplot3d code very accessible.

I do agree that there is still much work to be done in mplot3d.  But I think 
starting from scratch is a waste of time.

FYI, I looked into using mayavi2 before settling on mplot3d.  Mayavi can create 
some stunning graphics, but I found that it is very restrictive in its plotting 
options.  Take for example the 3d scatter plot.  They combined the size and 
color parameter.  Getting around this strange restriction took me quite some 
time.  (Installation for me was also a pain due to VTK).

-Ben


-Original Message-
From: Jakub Nowacki [mailto:j.s.nowa...@googlemail.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 12:01 PM
To: matplotlib-users
Subject: Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

Dear all,

I don't know if creating full blown 3d library makes much sense. I think 
Reinier is right here that the current mplot3d creates quite satisfactory 
outcome with matplotlib look-and-feel we all like. In general, there are 3d 
libraries/packages out there (VTK, Mayavi2 etc.), which do most of the stuff 
one would need. The problem is many times using is not that trivial. Also, the 
installation process is usually much more complex, eg. setting up mayavi2 on 
snow leopard took me several days. 

I asked the question in the first place because in many cases I need rather 
simple 3d plotting tool, without al the massive rendering capabilities etc. 
Since I use matplotlib anyway, it would be nice to use the same tool and not be 
forced to install and learn something new just to plot not very complicated 
surface. Hence, I think the main goal here should be to have a relatively 
simple but usable plotting tool with matplotlib look-an-feel. 

BTW I didn't know that my simple question would generate such a discussion. :)

Best wishes,

Jakub
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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-26 Thread Friedrich Romstedt
 I also agree with Reinier.  I want my 3d plots to look as close as possible 
 to my 2d plots.  Because mplot3d uses so much of the same matplotlib core, 
 this is trivial.  As Friedrich mentioned, the mplot3d code is actually pretty 
 small.  To me, that is a great feature.   I found the mplot3d code very 
 accessible.

Yes, I agree that it's really readable.  But I didn't understand the
sorting algorithm in plot_surface().

 I do agree that there is still much work to be done in mplot3d.  But I think 
 starting from scratch is a waste of time.

Well, I see ... When I write code from scratch as I often do, I mean
to open a new file and to copy old code only if it useful or
necessary.  So I don't want to break the old code.  I in fact think
the current code is doing good work.  But to my perception, it
nevetheless needs some additional concepts like the global surface
space and another sorting algorithm.

 FYI, I looked into using mayavi2 before settling on mplot3d.  Mayavi can 
 create some stunning graphics, but I found that it is very restrictive in its 
 plotting options.  Take for example the 3d scatter plot.  They combined the 
 size and color parameter.  Getting around this strange restriction took me 
 quite some time.  (Installation for me was also a pain due to VTK).

That's important information, at least for me.  I was so impressed by
mayavi, that I was near to be stopped from all enthusiasm for mplot3d.
 But I see, there would be some use.  The arguments you gave are
already quite strong.  I think the possibility to plot 2d things in 3d
context like a stack of curves using the matplotlib style seems to be
quite a good thing, isn't it?

I would like to tell some fresh look onto the problem just coming
into my mind.  What about turning matplotlib itself into the 3D
rendering engine?  This would maybe be like a fork.  But it would
leave all matplotlib commands intact, putting the layer like this:

matplotlib
--
3D rendering engine
--
backend

Instead of:

3D rendering engine

matplotlib

backend.

I mean, the matplotlib would create some kind of plotting commands,
either 2d or 3d.  The 3d ones would be translated into 2d camera space
by the intersecting layer.  2d ones would be promoted to the 3d camera
space before being projected into the 2d camera space.  This is a raw
idea, I'm shure, so please don't kill me for it.  When it turns out to
be without substance, I would not be offended.

How feasible would this be?

Friedrich

P.S.: But it would maybe simplify the sorting much.  The 3D engine
stores the projected polygons with z information (z as the depth from
the camera).  When another polygon arrives, it will be cut /after
projection/ into pieces based on the polygons in front of it, and be
drawn upon all polygons behind.  The weel again?

P.P.S.: I'm very un-self-confident about this ideas.  But I read, in
OSS one should also publish half-baken ideas, even when they do not
compile ...

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread Reinier Heeres
Hi all,

I'll mention again that I intend to continue supporting mplot3d,
although help would be greatly appreciated.

I think the z-ordering issues are in the end quite hard to tackle,
especially since we can have different kinds of structures in a plot,
e.g. polygons and lines (or rather: curves).

John's suggestion of a global polygon list would indeed be a good way
forward, and I will think about implementing this soon. However, the
next step of finding intersecting polygons and breaking them properly
could be quite slow if implemented in pure python. So I'm not sure
whether our goal should be to create a full 3d engine...

Cheers,
Reinier


On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 5:15 PM, John Hunter jdh2...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Ben Axelrod baxel...@coroware.com wrote:
 John, your assesment of the problem is correct.  And I believe your 
 suggested solution is also correct.  Currently, each call to a mplot3d plot 
 method is treated independantly.  They get converted into custom 
 PolyCollections which each do the Z-order sorting.


 There is still an issue here however.  Even if we implement the 
 aformentioned solution, we are still only approximating a 3d library.  And 
 the result will still not be as nice as matlab.  I believe that because we 
 treat the surface as a series of 2D polygons, the intersection between two 
 surfaces will be at the polygon edges.  See the attached image for an 
 example of what the intersection between a sphere and plane might look like.

 True enough, but as your example shows it would still be a substantial
 improvement over what we have now, and by getting all the faces in the
 scene into a single data structure, we leave open the possibility of
 doing something more sophisticated down the road (like chopping a
 problematic face into multiple faces, some in front, some behind, an
 intersecting object).

 JDH

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread Friedrich Romstedt
I have worked in highschool on a project Beam tracing where I had to
subdivide triangles from a certain point of view with z-ordering and with
such a subdivision how they are covered by the viewing beam.  This means
this engine you want to write already exists.  See the following ascii
graphics:

 ++
 |   /
 |   1  /
 | /
 |  +-/--+
 |   \ 2 /  /
 |\ /  /
 | /   3  /
 |/ \/
 |   /   \  /
 |  / \/
 | /
 |/

Say that 1 is in front of 2 + 3.  Then the engine will leave 1 unchanged,
will discard 2, and will subdivide 3 into a number of sub-triangles, which
comprise 3 exactly.

Don't know whether you are interested in the tringles at all or only in the
pathes of their contours.

The engine assumes that the sets of points comprising the sufaces of the
triangles are disjoint.

Friedrich

2010/2/25 Reinier Heeres rein...@heeres.eu:
 Hi all,

 I'll mention again that I intend to continue supporting mplot3d,
 although help would be greatly appreciated.

 I think the z-ordering issues are in the end quite hard to tackle,
 especially since we can have different kinds of structures in a plot,
 e.g. polygons and lines (or rather: curves).

 John's suggestion of a global polygon list would indeed be a good way
 forward, and I will think about implementing this soon. However, the
 next step of finding intersecting polygons and breaking them properly
 could be quite slow if implemented in pure python. So I'm not sure
 whether our goal should be to create a full 3d engine...

 Cheers,
 Reinier
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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread Reinier Heeres
Hi Friedrich,

Thanks for your message.

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Friedrich Romstedt
friedrichromst...@gmail.com wrote:
 I have worked in highschool on a project Beam tracing where I had to
 subdivide triangles from a certain point of view with z-ordering and with
 such a subdivision how they are covered by the viewing beam.  This means
 this engine you want to write already exists.  See the following ascii
 graphics:

Of course many 3D engines do this already, but the problem is always
the integration. Is your engine python based and is the code (freely)
available? I would be interested in taking a look.

Also, currently the native mpl structures are polygons instead of a
triangles, so they will have to be decomposed. This will definitely
cause some issues with line styles etc. that should not be applied to
all edges.

Cheers,
Reinier


  ++
  |   /
  |   1  /
  | /
  |  +-/--+
  |   \ 2 /  /
  |    \ /  /
  | /   3  /
  |    / \    /
  |   /   \  /
  |  / \/
  | /
  |/

 Say that 1 is in front of 2 + 3.  Then the engine will leave 1 unchanged,
 will discard 2, and will subdivide 3 into a number of sub-triangles, which
 comprise 3 exactly.

 Don't know whether you are interested in the tringles at all or only in the
 pathes of their contours.

 The engine assumes that the sets of points comprising the sufaces of the
 triangles are disjoint.

 Friedrich

 2010/2/25 Reinier Heeres rein...@heeres.eu:
 Hi all,

 I'll mention again that I intend to continue supporting mplot3d,
 although help would be greatly appreciated.

 I think the z-ordering issues are in the end quite hard to tackle,
 especially since we can have different kinds of structures in a plot,
 e.g. polygons and lines (or rather: curves).

 John's suggestion of a global polygon list would indeed be a good way
 forward, and I will think about implementing this soon. However, the
 next step of finding intersecting polygons and breaking them properly
 could be quite slow if implemented in pure python. So I'm not sure
 whether our goal should be to create a full 3d engine...

 Cheers,
 Reinier

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread John Hunter




On Feb 25, 2010, at 2:50 AM, Friedrich Romstedt friedrichromst...@gmail.com 
  wrote:

 2010/2/25 Reinier Heeres rein...@heeres.eu:
 Of course many 3D engines do this already, but the problem is always
 the integration. Is your engine python based and is the code (freely)
 available? I would be interested in taking a look.

 It's C++ code :-( And nearly no comments :-((  I myself will need some
 time to find out what part does what.
 But nevertheless, if it can help, I will be happy to privide with it.
 Maybe it's faster than writing from scratch and tracking all the bugs


We rely on plenty of C++ code so this isn't a problem for us. We would  
have to write an interface layer but it shouldn't be too difficult.  
The harder problem may be dealing tracking the interior vs the edges  
of the mesh, but certainly not insurmountable. If you'd like to  
contribute the code, that'd be great. If you want to add some comments  
first, even better.



 Also, currently the native mpl structures are polygons instead of a
 triangles, so they will have to be decomposed. This will definitely
 cause some issues with line styles etc. that should not be applied to
 all edges.

 What kind of structure is used to store the polygons?  Is each  
 polygon planar?


I believe the faces are quadrilateral, and Michael already wrote the  
code to convert these to triangle meshes for his gouraud shading work  
( which I'd still like to see ported to 3d).

It looks like we have enough 3D projects to justify a google summer of  
code student. Would those of you with an interest in mplot3d and some  
knowledge of the internals be interested in helping mentor a student?


 For the second issue, one could decompose the polygon into surface and
 boundary.  The lines would be clipped against the surfaces only, and
 the surfaces against the surfaces too.  Then one could draw the
 surfaces first without any line style around the triangles, and in the
 end the boundaries.

 When performing clipping, there will be no way around decomposing the
 polygons into something?

 Friedrich

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread Friedrich Romstedt
2010/2/25 John Hunter jdh2...@gmail.com:
 We rely on plenty of C++ code so this isn't a problem for us. We would have
 to write an interface layer but it shouldn't be too difficult. The harder
 problem may be dealing tracking the interior vs the edges of the mesh, but
 certainly not insurmountable. If you'd like to contribute the code, that'd
 be great. If you want to add some comments first, even better.

I'll be happy to contribute the code, but it certainly needs some
reworking and investigation before, because I recall it to be written
in part with german class names ... well, it was a high-school project
... long ago.

I think the concept could be fairly easy if I'm not mistaken: One has
a list of pathes (lines) and a list of patches (surfaces).  When
adding a plot, it will be both created and appended.  Then the
rendering engine clips the pathes and patches as mentioned.

I think also it would be a nice idea to design the thing in the whole
such that it can be integrated into matplotlib's core, I mean, that
one does not need to call another module to make 3D plots, but instead
simply passes another coordinate as non-None.  But this is just an
idea, I'm inclined to believe that it's maybe not feasible at the
present point.  Also I have way to low knowledge about mplot3d and am
in fact new to it.  Thus please apologise this thought if it is
half-baken or even raw.

 I believe the faces are quadrilateral, and Michael already wrote the code to
 convert these to triangle meshes for his gouraud shading work ( which I'd
 still like to see ported to 3d).

That sounds good, at least to me.

In fact, the project of mine is a complete renderer, thus we could
also incorporate any kind of shading and light sources and shadows
.. I send a picture appended.

 It looks like we have enough 3D projects to justify a google summer of code
 student. Would those of you with an interest in mplot3d and some knowledge
 of the internals be interested in helping mentor a student?

I never dived very deeply into matplotlib, and don't know how much
time I can efford for even one more project, but I can certainly help
with telling the concepts of my implementation etc. and how I coded
things, such that another person can do the real work :-) In fact,
even this small amount of help could maybe save us a lot of time?

My deepest matplotlib project was that mentioned in the thread
Embedding matplotlib in Tkinter Applications in the first post.
(Soon unter MIT.)

It would be great for me to make a contribution to a real usable
rendering engine ... :-)

Friedrich


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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread Eric Firing
John Hunter wrote:
[...]
 
 It looks like we have enough 3D projects to justify a google summer of  
 code student. Would those of you with an interest in mplot3d and some  
 knowledge of the internals be interested in helping mentor a student?
 

http://www.mail-archive.com/matplotlib-de...@lists.sourceforge.net/msg01343.html

Is it time for some re-thinking of the approach to 3-D?  I am a 
bystander, but I have the uneasy sense that trying to turn mplot3d into 
a first-class 3-D plotting tool may be a misapplication of effort. 
Might the effort be more productive if applied to mayavi, or built on 
mayavi, so that the 3-D engine is already taken care of?

Eric

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread Friedrich Romstedt
2010/2/25 Eric Firing efir...@hawaii.edu:
 Is it time for some re-thinking of the approach to 3-D?  I am a bystander,
 but I have the uneasy sense that trying to turn mplot3d into a first-class
 3-D plotting tool may be a misapplication of effort. Might the effort be
 more productive if applied to mayavi, or built on mayavi, so that the 3-D
 engine is already taken care of?

Hmm, mayavi seems not suitable for our purpose,
http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/docs/guide/ch04.html
First, mayavi always creates its gui, second, one has to use an
intermediate vtk file.  Don't know what about using vtk directly.

For me, it would just be an interesting task to solve, just as for the
person you cite:

http://www.mail-archive.com/matplotlib-de...@lists.sourceforge.net/msg01343.html
Re: [matplotlib-devel] mpl1: models, projections, other comments
Gael Varoquaux
Sun, 22 Jul 2007 02:18:36 -0700
 [...], but I
 did learn something: a 3D package must be fully 3D, or I think it won't
 go far. My personnal opinion is that I won't spend my time on a package
 that wants to do 3D and that does not keep a complete 3D representation
 of its object at all time, and even feeds it to the backends.

I would not feed it to the backend, as our backend seems to be the mpl
plotting engine, but I agree to the basic outline of this thought.

When I move through the code of mplot3d, which is indeed much shorter
that I expected, I find it not that way :-(.

I think, it would be a good approach to rewrite the package nearly
from scratch.  I don't want to diminish the work of John and Reinier
in any way, but I think as far as my knowledge of mplot3d reaches, I
come to an answer similar to that cited above.

When John and Reinier would agree, I would like to start thus a new
package, which uses mpl clearly as a backend.  For me, I wouln't
derive Axes3D from Axes, as it intermingles both.

This approach would even make the package much more general, as other
backends could be imagined (e.g., direct file rendering or display
from more than one viewing position.)  I would feel responsible for
the C++ rendering machine, this has to be fast, but I will certainly
need some advice :-) with Python extensions.

Btw, z sorting isn't sufficient, imagining a ring of surfaces, 1, 2,
..., n, e.g. like in a turbine's compressor wheels, such that 2  1
and 3  2 ... and 1  n, thus a ring.  Not always is a linear ordering
of the sufaces thus possible.

If my thoughts find some resonance, I would suggest a switch to
matplotlib-devel?

Friedrich

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-25 Thread Gael Varoquaux
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:16:40AM +0100, Friedrich Romstedt wrote:
 2010/2/25 Eric Firing efir...@hawaii.edu:
  Is it time for some re-thinking of the approach to 3-D?  I am a bystander,
  but I have the uneasy sense that trying to turn mplot3d into a first-class
  3-D plotting tool may be a misapplication of effort. Might the effort be
  more productive if applied to mayavi, or built on mayavi, so that the 3-D
  engine is already taken care of?

 Hmm, mayavi seems not suitable for our purpose,
 http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/docs/guide/ch04.html
 First, mayavi always creates its gui, second, one has to use an
 intermediate vtk file.  Don't know what about using vtk directly.

What Eric was most probably talking about is the newer versions of
Mayavi, that we tend to call 'mayavi2', even though we are now up to
version 3, in particular the mlab interface:

http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi/docs/development/html/mayavi/mlab.html

which is demoed in the examples:
http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi/docs/development/html/mayavi/auto/examples.html

I believe that Mayavi does take care of the task you are interested in.
It has its limitation and annoyances, but a lot of people use it quite
efficiently to do 3D plotting, for simple problems to very complex ones.

Gaël

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-22 Thread John Hunter
On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Ben Axelrod baxel...@coroware.com wrote:
 John, your assesment of the problem is correct.  And I believe your suggested 
 solution is also correct.  Currently, each call to a mplot3d plot method is 
 treated independantly.  They get converted into custom PolyCollections which 
 each do the Z-order sorting.


 There is still an issue here however.  Even if we implement the aformentioned 
 solution, we are still only approximating a 3d library.  And the result will 
 still not be as nice as matlab.  I believe that because we treat the surface 
 as a series of 2D polygons, the intersection between two surfaces will be at 
 the polygon edges.  See the attached image for an example of what the 
 intersection between a sphere and plane might look like.

True enough, but as your example shows it would still be a substantial
improvement over what we have now, and by getting all the faces in the
scene into a single data structure, we leave open the possibility of
doing something more sophisticated down the road (like chopping a
problematic face into multiple faces, some in front, some behind, an
intersecting object).

JDH

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-21 Thread John Hunter
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Jakub Nowacki
j.s.nowa...@googlemail.com wrote:
 Hi,

 I have quite general question. Since mplot3d now back in matplotlib, the 
 question is: is it going to stay there? Or is it some test release? I was 
 just wondering cause sometimes I use 3d plotting and use Mayavi2 for that but 
 in many cases it's like killing the spider with a shotgun, not mentioning 
 that installation process can be quite tricky.

 Thanks for answer in advance/

Like anything in open source, it stays as long as someone supports it.
 The original implementation in matplotlib.axes3d was not supported by
the original authors and none of the core developers had the bandwidth
to support it, so we pulled it when a significant transformations
refactoring broke the existing 3D support and noone had the resources
to fix it.  It languished for a while to Reinier picked up the torch
with help from others and reintegrated it into mpl.  To date he has
been supporting it but is mostly acting alone (bus factor 1) .  So we
plan to continue support for mpl but we need developers to do it, so
don't be shy about jumping into the code base and seeing if you can
make incremental enhancements when you need them.

On the plus side, the core of mpl is in pretty good shape, so I don't
anticipate the need for a significant refactoring of the internals of
the kind Michael did a couple of years ago which broke mplot3d the
first time.

JDH

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Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-21 Thread David Arnold
Hi,

What prevents me from using mplot3d in the classroom is highlighted by the 
following example.

# surface3d_demo2.py
import matplotlib
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

fig = plt.figure()
ax = Axes3D(fig)

u = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 100)
v = np.linspace(0,  np.pi,  100)

x = 10 * np.outer(np.cos(u), np.sin(v))
y = 10 * np.outer(np.sin(u), np.sin(v))
z = 10 * np.outer(np.ones(np.size(u)), np.cos(v))

ax.plot_surface(x, y, z, rstride=4,  cstride=4, color='b')

yy = np.linspace(-10, 10, 40)
zz = np.linspace(-10, 10, 40)
[yy, zz] = np.meshgrid(yy, zz)
xx = np.ones(np.shape(yy))

ax.plot_surface(xx, yy, zz, rstride=1, cstride=1, color=.7)

ax.set_xlabel('x-axis')
ax.set_ylabel('y-axis')

plt.show()

This code produces the following image:

http://msemac.redwoods.edu/~darnold/junk/test1.png

Pretty much the same code in Matlab:

u=linspace(0,2*pi,40);
v=linspace(0,pi,40);
[u,v]=meshgrid(u,v);
 
x=10*cos(u).*sin(v);
y=10*sin(u).*sin(v);
z=10*cos(v);
 
surf(x,y,z,'FaceColor','b')
 
yy=linspace(-10,10,40);
zz=yy;
[yy,zz]=meshgrid(yy,zz);
xx=ones(size(yy));
 
hold on
 
surf(xx,yy,zz,'FaceColor',[0.7,0.7,0.7])
 
view(30,30)
 
print -dpng 'test2.png'
 
shg


Produces this image:

http://msemac.redwoods.edu/~darnold/junk/test2.png

The inability of mplot3d to determine which image is in front seems to be a 
problem.

The following page (must be viewed in Firefox) will give some sense of what I 
need when teaching multivariable calculus.

http://msemac.redwoods.edu/~darnold/math50c/matlab/index.php

David Arnold
College of the Redwoods
http://msemac.redwoods.edu/~darnold/index.php



Davd Arnold
College of the Redwoods
On Feb 21, 2010, at 2:02 PM, Ben Axelrod wrote:

 I am not a MPL developer, but I am using mplot3d quite heavily right now to 
 support 3D plots for a client of mine.  I have found many bugs and lacking 
 features which I require in the mplot3d library and have modified my local 
 copy of the code significantly.  I am eagerly awaiting Reinier's return from 
 vacation so that I can work with him to integrate my improvements.  For the 
 most part, these fixes simply make the 3D plots behave more like the 2D 
 plots.  Here is a tentative list of my changes so far:
 
 * bug fix: placement of title in 3D plots to match 2D plot behavior
 * bug fix: allow facecolors and edgecolors to be specified as 'none' in 3D 
 scatter plots to match the 2D scatter plot behavior
 * bug fix: allow all keyword arguments to be used in text3D
 * bug fix: allow an array of colors to be passed into bar3d to specify the 
 colors on a per-bar or per-face basis
 * bug fix: allow all keyword arguments to be used in bar3d
 * bug fix: allow 3d scatter plots with 3 or 4 points with colors specified
 * new feature: new method to disable mouse rotation in 3D plots
 * new feature: new Z-order sorting heuristic to eliminate rendering issues 
 for the common case of using bar3d to visualize a 2D histogram
 * new feature: new method text2D
 * code cleanup: warn when canvas is None which disables mouse callbacks
 * code cleanup: fully document more methods in mplot3d
 
 Although I haven't written them yet, I can probably create a couple more 
 example codes:
 * example code: demonstrate use of transform() to do rectangle selection in 
 3D scatter plots
 * example code: mplot3d with wx - demonstrate turning off mouse rotations to 
 make pan and zoom toolbar buttons work properly
 
 There are a few other bugs that I would really like fixed, but can't quite 
 figure out right now.  Hopefully Reinier will be able to shed some light on 
 these:
 * axis label picking for 3D axes
 * how to set axis tick label properties for 3D axes
 * allow 3d boxes with transparent faces to make wireframe boxes
 * fix z-order sorting across multiple calls to bar3d()
 
 I should note that because of my client, I have a vested interest in seeing 
 mplot3d (with the above bug fixes) make it into a stable release of MPL.  But 
 at the same time, I don't have a lot of spare time to spend on MPL 
 development.
 
 Thanks,
 -Ben
 
 
 From: John Hunter [jdh2...@gmail.com]
 Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 12:19 PM
 To: Jakub Nowacki
 Cc: matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net
 Subject: Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?
 
 On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Jakub Nowacki
 j.s.nowa...@googlemail.com wrote:
 Hi,
 
 I have quite general question. Since mplot3d now back in matplotlib, the 
 question is: is it going to stay there? Or is it some test release? I was 
 just wondering cause sometimes I use 3d plotting and use Mayavi2 for that 
 but in many cases it's like killing the spider with a shotgun, not 
 mentioning that installation process can be quite tricky.
 
 Thanks for answer in advance/
 
 Like anything in open source, it stays as long as someone supports it.
 The original implementation in matplotlib.axes3d was not supported by
 the original authors and none

Re: [Matplotlib-users] mplot3d stays?

2010-02-21 Thread John Hunter
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Ben Axelrod baxel...@coroware.com wrote:
 I am not a MPL developer,

You are now :-)

 but I am using mplot3d quite heavily right now to support 3D plots for a 
 client of mine.  I have found many bugs and
 lacking features which I require in the mplot3d library and have modified my 
 local copy of the code significantly.  I am
 eagerly awaiting Reinier's return from vacation so that I can work with him 
 to integrate my improvements.  For the most
 part, these fixes simply make the 3D plots behave more like the 2D plots.  
 Here is a tentative list of my changes so far:

  * bug fix: placement of title in 3D plots to match 2D plot behavior
  * bug fix: allow facecolors and edgecolors to be specified as 'none' in 3D 
 scatter plots to match the 2D scatter plot behavior
  * bug fix: allow all keyword arguments to be used in text3D
  * bug fix: allow an array of colors to be passed into bar3d to specify the 
 colors on a per-bar or per-face basis
  * bug fix: allow all keyword arguments to be used in bar3d
  * bug fix: allow 3d scatter plots with 3 or 4 points with colors specified
  * new feature: new method to disable mouse rotation in 3D plots
  * new feature: new Z-order sorting heuristic to eliminate rendering issues 
 for the common case of using bar3d to visualize a 2D histogram
  * new feature: new method text2D
  * code cleanup: warn when canvas is None which disables mouse callbacks
  * code cleanup: fully document more methods in mplot3d


I'd be happy to take a look at this patch and commit it - Reinier can
review it and make any necessary changes when he gets back.

 Although I haven't written them yet, I can probably create a couple more 
 example codes:
  * example code: demonstrate use of transform() to do rectangle selection in 
 3D scatter plots
  * example code: mplot3d with wx - demonstrate turning off mouse rotations to 
 make pan and zoom toolbar buttons work properly

 There are a few other bugs that I would really like fixed, but can't quite 
 figure out right now.  Hopefully Reinier will be able to shed some light on 
 these:
  * axis label picking for 3D axes
  * how to set axis tick label properties for 3D axes
  * allow 3d boxes with transparent faces to make wireframe boxes
  * fix z-order sorting across multiple calls to bar3d()

 I should note that because of my client, I have a vested interest in seeing 
 mplot3d (with the above bug fixes) make it
 into a stable release of MPL.  But at the same time, I don't have a lot of 
 spare time to spend on MPL development.

I see no reason why they can't make it into the (overdue, upcoming)
1.0 if you can get a patch together in the next week or two.

JDH

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