How to rotate the 3D scatter plots in google colaboratory?

Question

I am generating a 3d scatter plot in google colab, but the problem is that the generated fig is static and is not rotatable. I also tried the command

%matplotlib notebook

to enable the 3D scatter rotation as it apparently work in jupyter notebook environment,but it seems this doesn't work in google colab environment.

you can find my code here

Answer 1

As of now, you cannot rotate 3D plots generated by MatPlotlib in Colab. Plotly is a better alternative.

However, you can use the view_init method to change the view. It has two parameters (elev for elevation and azim for azimuth angles) to set to rotate the axes. You will get a different viewpoint.

By default, the view_init is set as azim=-60, elev=30. The angles are specified in degrees. In your code, change the values of elev and azim to something else before using the scatter method. An example that uses ax.view_init(elev=30, azim=-120) is shown below:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import axes3d

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection = '3d')

x1 = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
y1 = np.random.randint(10, size=10)
z1 = np.random.randint(10, size=10)

x2 = [-1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -9, -10]
y2 = np.random.randint(-10, 0, size=10)
z2 = np.random.randint(10, size=10)

ax.view_init(elev=30, azim=-120)
ax.scatter(x1, y1, z1, c='b', marker='o', label='blue')
ax.scatter(x2, y2, z2, c='g', marker='D', label='green')

ax.set_xlabel('x axis')
ax.set_ylabel('y axis')
ax.set_zlabel('z axis')
plt.title("3D Scatter Plot Example")
plt.legend()
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

This produces the following plot:

Note:

1. ax.view_init(elev=0, azim=60): A zero elevation makes the plot as if we are looking horizontally.
2. ax.view_init(elev=-30, azim=60): A negative elevation inverts vertically.

This figure explains the meaning of azimuth and elevation better.

Answer 2

Try plotly (python graphic libraries) 3D scatter plot.