scatter3, colors indicate 3dimensions

Dear all, I have 3 vectors, flux1, flux2 and temperature, both fluxes depending on temperature. I plotted all 3 in a figure using scatter3. Now I'd like to color the Markerpoints depending on their hight (=according temperature) so that the scatterpoint cloud is easier to read. I know with: scatter3(x,y,z,s,c), c gives an option to do this but I don't seem to understand how to create a c matrix. I randomly tried this:

figure
test = [flux1.';flux2.';temp.'].';
scatter3(flux1,flux2,temp,20,test,'*')
view([10 20])
zlabel('Temperature')
xlabel('sensible heat flux')
ylabel('latent heat flux')
set(gca,'Color',[0.8 0.8 0.8]);

but I'm not happy about it (too much white colored points for high values) and I'd love to actually understand where the coloring comes from my random c-matrix and how I can influence that. Any suggestions and hints? :)

Sorry if this is a very basic question but I couldn't find an answer in the Documentation and I'm pretty new to matlab.

Answer 1

[Vandana Rajan]

Hi,

To color the marker points according to the temperature intensity, put c = temp. Now the values in 'c' are linearly mapped to the current colormap. The command 'colorbar' shows the current colormap on the side of figure.

clearvars; close all; clc;

%%create the 3 vectors
a = -50;
b = 50;
flux1 = (b-a).*rand(100,1) + a;
flux2 = (b-a).*rand(100,1) + a;
temp = linspace(-5,15,100);

%%when c is of same length as flux1, flux2 and temp, then values in c are linearly mapped to the current colormap
% The command 'colorbar' shows the current colormap on the side of the
% figure
figure; 
scatter3(flux1,flux2,temp,20,temp,'*');
zlabel('Temperature')
xlabel('sensible heat flux')
ylabel('latent heat flux')
title('With c = temperature');
colorbar

A number of built-in colormaps are available in MATLAB. You can choose a colormap of your taste. You can also use your own customized colormaps. See this link for more details. http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/colormap.html

[Marilena Geng]

awesome. So much easier than I thought! :D Thank you!