MATLAB: Colour range in a surfplot

colourmapsurfplot

Hi all,
I am trying to create a surfplot by using the following dataset:
X = [0.6944 1.0417 1.3889 1.7361 2.0833;
     0.6944 1.0417 1.3889 1.7361 2.0833;
     0.6944 1.0417 1.3889 1.7361 2.0833;
     0.6944 0.7639 0.8333 1.0417 1.3194
     0.6944 0.7639 0.8333 NaN NaN];
Y = [100 100 100 100 100;
     80 80 80 80 80;
     50 50 50 50 50;
     30 30 30 30 30;
     20 20 20 20 20];      
 
Z = [9.9154    9.9154   13.2126  16.5108   19.6816;
    9.9723   17.3669   18.0949   22.1746   26.1141;
    2.5790    3.3976    4.2679   17.8651   79.8182;
    8.9384   13.1504   17.8445   35.8271  114.3840;
    48.1118   66.3772   82.9677  NaN       NaN];
The code for the figure is as follows:
figure
surf(X,Y,Z)
colorbar
colormap(viridis)
xlabel('X','FontSize', 16)
ylabel('Y','FontSize', 16)
zlabel('Z','FontSize', 16)
ax = gca;
ax.FontSize = 14;
figure
contourf(X,Y,Z)
colorbar
colormap(viridis)
xlabel('X','FontSize', 16)
ylabel('Y','FontSize', 16)
zlabel('Z','FontSize', 16)
ax = gca;
ax.FontSize = 14;
The two figures I obtained are shown below:
Surfplot1.png Surfplot2.png
My question is:
The colour range in the first figure cannot be visualised properly due to the small dataset in the green and yellow ranges (see dataset and Figure 2). Is there a solution to resolve this problem? I have tried several other solutions such as caxis and meshgrid, but none of these solutions can help in improving the visualisation in the first figure.
Thank you for your suggestions in advance.

Best Answer

By default, a surf plot uses faceted shading, which means that each face is a solid color, determined by a single vertex in that face. To get similar coloring as the contour plot, try interpolated shading instead:
figure
s = surf(X,Y,Z)
colorbar
colormap(viridis)
xlabel('X','FontSize', 16)
ylabel('Y','FontSize', 16)
zlabel('Z','FontSize', 16)
ax = gca;
ax.FontSize = 14;
shading interp;
set(s, 'edgecolor', 'k'); % if you still want the face edges visible
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