[R] Persp and color

[ucgamdo@ucl.ac.uk]

Hi, first of all I would like to say that honestly the persp demo is quite
impresive, I won't take that away from you. The only problem I had, was
that the code that actually builds the matrix of topo-colours that are used
in the demo, is quite complicated (at least for me), and that code is
poorly commented. So I was left with a series of help's() to try to see
what each function would do, etc, etc..., while I was in that proccess I
rembered about the wireframe function, and after checking its
documentation, I found out that it has 'built-in' the ability to creaty
this topo colors, that, I think is a great advantage. Maybe a good idea
would be to insert the procedure you used to create the colors into the
persp function itself, so humble neophyte users can easily plot striking
volcano surfaces.

This is actually the bit of code I couldn't work out, I know I would if I
just could invest more of my precious time to it:

> fcol <- fill

> zi <- volcano[-1, -1] + volcano[-1, -61] + volcano[-87, 
    -1] + volcano[-87, -61]

> fcol[-i1, -i2] <- terrain.colors(20)[cut(zi, quantile(zi, 
    seq(0, 1, len = 21)), include.lowest = TRUE)]

> persp(x, y, 2 * z, theta = 110, phi = 40, col = fcol, 
    scale = FALSE, ltheta = -120, shade = 0.4, border = NA, box = FALSE)


just another thing, I have realised that the demo runs from beginning to
end without stopping (not always), that is not very nice because the plots
are displayed too quickly to appreciate, so the user is left to 'run' de
demo manualy, i.e. copying and pasting each bit of code in order to see
each plot in detail. I am aware that R is the product of the cooperation of
many people, contributing part of their work-time into making it better, I
think your demo is fine, and perhaps you won't have time to improve on it,
don't worry about that (no bad feelings).

You correctly pointed out that a better way around was to go ask R-help
directly. Certainly, that is what I intended to do with my own problem, but
first I wanted to write my code properly. Tomorrow, I will post a thread
about making persp representations of fractals in R, and maybe, you will be
able to help me in showing how to correctly apply the colours to the
surface. Maybe you will find this interested, and who knows, you will
perhaps put it in your demo!

By the way, I did also check help(persp), and how the colours are asigned
to the surface facets is not well specified, not even on the examples (as I
am aware of).

Thanks,
Mario.





At 14:41 16/09/03 +0200, you wrote:
>>>>>> "ucgamdo" == ucgamdo  <ucgamdo at ucl.ac.uk>
>>>>>>     on Tue, 16 Sep 2003 11:46:18 +0100 writes:
>
>    ucgamdo> Hi, If you run the demo for persp (I have R 1.7),
>    ucgamdo> you will see that there is a good example of
>    ucgamdo> 'coluring' a volcano according to different
>    ucgamdo> heights, just try
>
>    >> demo(persp)
>
>    ucgamdo> and check out the code. You probably will find it
>    ucgamdo> too complicated as I did, I was trying to do the
>    ucgamdo> same and honestly I wasn't able to. 
>
>Thank you for you honesty.  As a main author of the part of
>demo(persp) I'm quite interested to find out what the problem
>was.  I assume you also have looked at  help(persp) ?
>
>    ucgamdo> However, there is a way around 
>
>[ another way around would be to ask on R-help or ask  someone who
>  knows R better ... ... ]
>
>    ucgamdo> and it is to use the
>    ucgamdo> function wireframe from the lattice package
>
>    >> library(lattice) ?wireframe
>
>    ucgamdo> If you run through the help examples you'll see
>    ucgamdo> that it is a lot easier to colour the surfaces the
>    ucgamdo> way you want using this function. However,
>    ucgamdo> wireframe is extreMELY slow, so, if you have a big
>    ucgamdo> matrix it might be a pain in the behind. Also, the
>    ucgamdo> way you feed the data to wireframe is different to
>    ucgamdo> the way you do it with the persp function. I hope
>    ucgamdo> this is of any help.
>
>    ucgamdo> M.
>
>    ucgamdo> ______________________________________________
>    ucgamdo> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>    ucgamdo> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>
>