Creating Pseudocolor Plots with Matplotlib Tripcolor

Introduction

This tutorial will guide you through creating pseudocolor plots of unstructured triangular grids using Python Matplotlib's tripcolor() function.

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Skills Graph

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.