3D Surface Plots in R

How to make interactive 3D surface plots in R.

New to Plotly?

Plotly is a free and open-source graphing library for R. We recommend you read our Getting Started guide for the latest installation or upgrade instructions, then move on to our Plotly Fundamentals tutorials or dive straight in to some Basic Charts tutorials.

Basic 3D Surface Plot

library(plotly)
# volcano is a numeric matrix that ships with R
fig <- plot_ly(z = ~volcano)
fig <- fig %>% add_surface()

fig

Surface Plot With Contours

library(plotly)
# volcano is a numeric matrix that ships with R
fig <- plot_ly(z = ~volcano) %>% add_surface(
  contours = list(
    z = list(
      show=TRUE,
      usecolormap=TRUE,
      highlightcolor="#ff0000",
      project=list(z=TRUE)
      )
    )
  )
fig <- fig %>% layout(
    scene = list(
      camera=list(
        eye = list(x=1.87, y=0.88, z=-0.64)
        )
      )
  )

fig

2D Kernel Density Estimation

kd <- with(MASS::geyser, MASS::kde2d(duration, waiting, n = 50))
fig <- plot_ly(x = kd$x, y = kd$y, z = kd$z) %>% add_surface()

fig

Configure Surface Contour Levels

This example shows how to slice the surface graph on the desired position for each of x, y and z axis. contours.x.start sets the starting contour level value, end sets the end of it, and size sets the step between each contour level.

x = c(1,2,3,4,5)
y = c(1,2,3,4,5)
z = rbind(
  c(0, 1, 0, 1, 0),
  c(1, 0, 1, 0, 1),
  c(0, 1, 0, 1, 0),
  c(1, 0, 1, 0, 1),
  c(0, 1, 0, 1, 0))


library(plotly)
fig <- plot_ly(
  type = 'surface',
  contours = list(
    x = list(show = TRUE, start = 1.5, end = 2, size = 0.04, color = 'white'),
    z = list(show = TRUE, start = 0.5, end = 0.8, size = 0.05)),
  x = ~x,
  y = ~y,
  z = ~z)
fig <- fig %>% layout(
    scene = list(
      xaxis = list(nticks = 20),
      zaxis = list(nticks = 4),
      camera = list(eye = list(x = 0, y = -1, z = 0.5)),
      aspectratio = list(x = .9, y = .8, z = 0.2)))

fig

Multiple Surfaces

z <- c(
  c(8.83,8.89,8.81,8.87,8.9,8.87),
  c(8.89,8.94,8.85,8.94,8.96,8.92),
  c(8.84,8.9,8.82,8.92,8.93,8.91),
  c(8.79,8.85,8.79,8.9,8.94,8.92),
  c(8.79,8.88,8.81,8.9,8.95,8.92),
  c(8.8,8.82,8.78,8.91,8.94,8.92),
  c(8.75,8.78,8.77,8.91,8.95,8.92),
  c(8.8,8.8,8.77,8.91,8.95,8.94),
  c(8.74,8.81,8.76,8.93,8.98,8.99),
  c(8.89,8.99,8.92,9.1,9.13,9.11),
  c(8.97,8.97,8.91,9.09,9.11,9.11),
  c(9.04,9.08,9.05,9.25,9.28,9.27),
  c(9,9.01,9,9.2,9.23,9.2),
  c(8.99,8.99,8.98,9.18,9.2,9.19),
  c(8.93,8.97,8.97,9.18,9.2,9.18)
)
dim(z) <- c(15,6)
z2 <- z + 1
z3 <- z - 1

fig <- plot_ly(showscale = FALSE)
fig <- fig %>% add_surface(z = ~z)
fig <- fig %>% add_surface(z = ~z2, opacity = 0.98)
fig <- fig %>% add_surface(z = ~z3, opacity = 0.98)

fig

What About Dash?

Dash for R is an open-source framework for building analytical applications, with no Javascript required, and it is tightly integrated with the Plotly graphing library.

Learn about how to install Dash for R at https://dashr.plot.ly/installation.

Everywhere in this page that you see fig, you can display the same figure in a Dash for R application by passing it to the figure argument of the Graph component from the built-in dashCoreComponents package like this:

library(plotly)

fig <- plot_ly() 
# fig <- fig %>% add_trace( ... )
# fig <- fig %>% layout( ... ) 

library(dash)
library(dashCoreComponents)
library(dashHtmlComponents)

app <- Dash$new()
app$layout(
    htmlDiv(
        list(
            dccGraph(figure=fig) 
        )
     )
)

app$run_server(debug=TRUE, dev_tools_hot_reload=FALSE)