3D surface (color map)

Demonstrates plotting a 3D surface colored with the coolwarm color map. The surface is made opaque by using antialiased=False.

Also demonstrates using the LinearLocator and custom formatting for the z axis tick labels.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import cm
from matplotlib.ticker import LinearLocator
import numpy as np

fig, ax = plt.subplots(subplot_kw={"projection": "3d"})

# Make data.
X = np.arange(-5, 5, 0.25)
Y = np.arange(-5, 5, 0.25)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(X, Y)
R = np.sqrt(X**2 + Y**2)
Z = np.sin(R)

# Plot the surface.
surf = ax.plot_surface(X, Y, Z, cmap=cm.coolwarm,
                       linewidth=0, antialiased=False)

# Customize the z axis.
ax.set_zlim(-1.01, 1.01)
ax.zaxis.set_major_locator(LinearLocator(10))
# A StrMethodFormatter is used automatically
ax.zaxis.set_major_formatter('{x:.02f}')

# Add a color bar which maps values to colors.
fig.colorbar(surf, shrink=0.5, aspect=5)

plt.show()

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References

The use of the following functions, methods, classes and modules is shown in this example:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.pyplot.subplots
matplotlib.axis.Axis.set_major_formatter
matplotlib.axis.Axis.set_major_locator
matplotlib.ticker.LinearLocator
matplotlib.ticker.StrMethodFormatter