Introduction
This tutorial will guide you through creating pseudocolor plots of unstructured triangular grids using Python Matplotlib's tripcolor() function.
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Import Libraries
First, we need to import the necessary libraries for this tutorial.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.tri as tri
Creating a Delaunay Triangulation
We will create a Delaunay triangulation of the points. First, we will create the x and y coordinates of the points using NumPy.
n_angles = 36
n_radii = 8
min_radius = 0.25
radii = np.linspace(min_radius, 0.95, n_radii)
angles = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, n_angles, endpoint=False)
angles = np.repeat(angles[..., np.newaxis], n_radii, axis=1)
angles[:, 1::2] += np.pi / n_angles
x = (radii * np.cos(angles)).flatten()
y = (radii * np.sin(angles)).flatten()
Then, we will create the z coordinates of the points.
z = (np.cos(radii) * np.cos(3 * angles)).flatten()
Next, we will create the Triangulation object using the Triangulation() function from matplotlib.tri. Since we are not specifying the triangles, the Delaunay triangulation will be created automatically.
triang = tri.Triangulation(x, y)
Finally, we will mask off unwanted triangles using the set_mask() function. In this example, we are setting the mask to exclude triangles with a mean radius less than min_radius.
triang.set_mask(np.hypot(x[triang.triangles].mean(axis=1),
y[triang.triangles].mean(axis=1))
< min_radius)
Create a Tripcolor Plot
Now, we will create a tripcolor plot using the tripcolor() function. We will create two plots using different shading methods.
## Flat shading plot
fig1, ax1 = plt.subplots()
ax1.set_aspect('equal')
tpc = ax1.tripcolor(triang, z, shading='flat')
fig1.colorbar(tpc)
ax1.set_title('tripcolor of Delaunay triangulation, flat shading')
## Gouraud shading plot
fig2, ax2 = plt.subplots()
ax2.set_aspect('equal')
tpc = ax2.tripcolor(triang, z, shading='gouraud')
fig2.colorbar(tpc)
ax2.set_title('tripcolor of Delaunay triangulation, gouraud shading')
Create a User-Specified Triangulation
We can also specify our own triangulation using the x, y, and triangles arrays. In this example, we will create a user-specified triangulation using the tripcolor() function.
## Create x, y, and triangles arrays
xy = np.asarray([
[-0.101, 0.872], [-0.080, 0.883], [-0.069, 0.888], [-0.054, 0.890],
[-0.045, 0.897], [-0.057, 0.895], [-0.073, 0.900], [-0.087, 0.898],
[-0.090, 0.904], [-0.069, 0.907], [-0.069, 0.921], [-0.080, 0.919],
[-0.073, 0.928], [-0.052, 0.930], [-0.048, 0.942], [-0.062, 0.949],
[-0.054, 0.958], [-0.069, 0.954], [-0.087, 0.952], [-0.087, 0.959],
[-0.080, 0.966], [-0.085, 0.973], [-0.087, 0.965], [-0.097, 0.965],
[-0.097, 0.975], [-0.092, 0.984], [-0.101, 0.980], [-0.108, 0.980],
[-0.104, 0.987], [-0.102, 0.993], [-0.115, 1.001], [-0.099, 0.996],
[-0.101, 1.007], [-0.090, 1.010], [-0.087, 1.021], [-0.069, 1.021],
[-0.052, 1.022], [-0.052, 1.017], [-0.069, 1.010], [-0.064, 1.005],
[-0.048, 1.005], [-0.031, 1.005], [-0.031, 0.996], [-0.040, 0.987],
[-0.045, 0.980], [-0.052, 0.975], [-0.040, 0.973], [-0.026, 0.968],
[-0.020, 0.954], [-0.006, 0.947], [ 0.003, 0.935], [ 0.006, 0.926],
[ 0.005, 0.921], [ 0.022, 0.923], [ 0.033, 0.912], [ 0.029, 0.905],
[ 0.017, 0.900], [ 0.012, 0.895], [ 0.027, 0.893], [ 0.019, 0.886],
[ 0.001, 0.883], [-0.012, 0.884], [-0.029, 0.883], [-0.038, 0.879],
[-0.057, 0.881], [-0.062, 0.876], [-0.078, 0.876], [-0.087, 0.872],
[-0.030, 0.907], [-0.007, 0.905], [-0.057, 0.916], [-0.025, 0.933],
[-0.077, 0.990], [-0.059, 0.993]])
x, y = np.rad2deg(xy).T
triangles = np.asarray([
[67, 66, 1], [65, 2, 66], [ 1, 66, 2], [64, 2, 65], [63, 3, 64],
[60, 59, 57], [ 2, 64, 3], [ 3, 63, 4], [ 0, 67, 1], [62, 4, 63],
[57, 59, 56], [59, 58, 56], [61, 60, 69], [57, 69, 60], [ 4, 62, 68],
[ 6, 5, 9], [61, 68, 62], [69, 68, 61], [ 9, 5, 70], [ 6, 8, 7],
[ 4, 70, 5], [ 8, 6, 9], [56, 69, 57], [69, 56, 52], [70, 10, 9],
[54, 53, 55], [56, 55, 53], [68, 70, 4], [52, 56, 53], [11, 10, 12],
[69, 71, 68], [68, 13, 70], [10, 70, 13], [51, 50, 52], [13, 68, 71],
[52, 71, 69], [12, 10, 13], [71, 52, 50], [71, 14, 13], [50, 49, 71],
[49, 48, 71], [14, 16, 15], [14, 71, 48], [17, 19, 18], [17, 20, 19],
[48, 16, 14], [48, 47, 16], [47, 46, 16], [16, 46, 45], [23, 22, 24],
[21, 24, 22], [17, 16, 45], [20, 17, 45], [21, 25, 24], [27, 26, 28],
[20, 72, 21], [25, 21, 72], [45, 72, 20], [25, 28, 26], [44, 73, 45],
[72, 45, 73], [28, 25, 29], [29, 25, 31], [43, 73, 44], [73, 43, 40],
[72, 73, 39], [72, 31, 25], [42, 40, 43], [31, 30, 29], [39, 73, 40],
[42, 41, 40], [72, 33, 31], [32, 31, 33], [39, 38, 72], [33, 72, 38],
[33, 38, 34], [37, 35, 38], [34, 38, 35], [35, 37, 36]])
Then, we will create the z coordinates of the faces using the mean() function.
xmid = x[triangles].mean(axis=1)
ymid = y[triangles].mean(axis=1)
x0 = -5
y0 = 52
zfaces = np.exp(-0.01 * ((xmid - x0) * (xmid - x0) +
(ymid - y0) * (ymid - y0)))
Finally, we will create the tripcolor plot using the tripcolor() function and specifying the x, y, triangles, facecolors, and edgecolors.
fig3, ax3 = plt.subplots()
ax3.set_aspect('equal')
tpc = ax3.tripcolor(x, y, triangles, facecolors=zfaces, edgecolors='k')
fig3.colorbar(tpc)
ax3.set_title('tripcolor of user-specified triangulation')
ax3.set_xlabel('Longitude (degrees)')
ax3.set_ylabel('Latitude (degrees)')
Plot the Results
Finally, we will use the show() function to display the plots.
plt.show()
Summary
In this tutorial, we learned how to create pseudocolor plots of unstructured triangular grids using Python Matplotlib's tripcolor() function. We created a Delaunay triangulation and a user-specified triangulation, and plotted the results using different shading methods.