Help requested for generating an example for this kind of 3D plot

Hi

Please see the figure attached. I have explored a lot but I have not been able to find options to generate a plot like the one shown. Any example (dummy data) would do perfectly for me. Thanks a lot

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

Take a look at the MATLAB Plot Gallery for something similar. You can copy code from there.

You probably want either mesh or surf.

Answer 2

[chicken vector]

You can use surf to generate 3D meshes and inpolygon as binary mask to customise the shape of the base grid.

% Number of grids:
nGrid = 50;

% Get [X, Y, Z] data for the plot:
[X,Y] = meshgrid(-1:1/nGrid:1, -1:1/nGrid:1);
Z = peaks(X,Y);

% Number of star corners:
nVertices = 5;

% Outer vertices:
theta = 2*pi*(1/nVertices:1/nVertices:1);
outerVertices = [cos(theta), sin(theta)];

% Inner vertices:
theta = theta + 2*pi/(nVertices*2);
innerVertices = [cos(theta), sin(theta)]/2;

% Compute mask indeces:
vertices = [outerVertices;innerVertices];
vertices = reshape(vertices(:),[],2);
pointsInsideStar = inpolygon(X, Y, vertices(:,1), vertices(:,2));

% Set Z values to NaN when outside the star:
Z(~pointsInsideStar) = NaN;

% Plot:
surf(X, Y, Z, 'AlphaData', ~isnan(Z), 'EdgeColor', 'k', 'FaceColor', [.5 .5 .5])

% Axes labels:
xlabel('x [\mum]')
ylabel('y [\mum]')
zlabel('Film thickness [\mum]')

Result: