3D-accellerated plotting, as flexible as matlab, mathematica etc?

Question

I am looking for a library to plot large data sets with a feature set similar to professional plotting tools (e.g. Matlab, Mathematica), but 3D accelareted. In particular I value

• can be scripted like the professional tools above (flexible usage)
• has a feature at least as big as these
• fast (well, that's what the title says)

I can imagine (actually, I have very much in mind) something like this might exist for python - say, NumPy, SciPy. But I am not well-versed with these libraries yet. It would be great if I could convince people to abandon matlab.

Answer 1

MathGL is cross-platform GPL library written in C/C++ which can plot huge data set (including 2- and 3-ranged data). Its list of graphics types is the same or larger than ones in Matlab and in Mathematica. MathGL have its own scripting language (MGL) and have interfaces to Python (including numpy), Fortran, Octave, Forth, Pascal and so on.

Answer 2

Check out Mayavi, a 3d visualization package for Python that wraps around VTK. It's very flexible, has decent documentation, and hardware-accelerated rendering.